Women born in the 1940s

"Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity."

"It is so hard for us little human beings to accept this deal that we get. It's really crazy, isn't it? We get to live, then we have to die. What we put into every moment is all we have… What spirit human beings have! It is a pretty cheesy deal—all the pleasures of life, and then death."

"While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die—whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness."

"A company producing a television commercial was looking for child dancers. … It was a commercial set in the fifties, and a young family broke into dance. I was the son; I had a sister, a father, and a mother, who was played by Gilda Radner. Gilda had not yet been hired for Saturday Night Live (in fact, Saturday Night Live didn’t exist yet). It was a four-day shoot, and I, like every other human being who met her, fell in love with Gilda. And on the last day of the shoot, we said our goodbyes in the parking lot. I cried like a baby. My whole family came to pick me up, and upon seeing me crying, my brothers gave me a new nickname to replace Twinkletoes. I was hereby called Sucky Baby, because of the emotion I had displayed upon my cruel separation from Ms. Gilda Radner, who became known in my house as “your girlfriend.” I was Sucky Baby for ten years."

"In countries like ours, women enter politics in mourning clothes."

"Although the mass of the people accepted the white man's God, either under physical duress or because he seemed more powerful than their own Gods, they never assimilated the ideas of Christianity."

"And many of the people who buy or found banks have had no experience in banking at all. If they can learn it, so can we."

"In contrast, traditional Catholic churches serve vast numbers of people who have little or nothing in common, and they are often impersonal supermarkets for the sacraments."

"At stake are two different visions of faith, the Church of Caesar, powerful and rich; and the Church of Christ - loving, poor and spiritually rich."

"Opus Dei is an efficient machine run to achieve world power."

"And the Third World will continue to beckon to the First, reminding it of the Galilean vision of Christian solidarity."

"Damn Americans... I hate those bastards."

"Come hell or high water, there's no frigging way I'm going to let one ovary bring the government down."

"As I sat and spoke with President Bush about his dream of launching a mission to Mars. And I thought to myself: Wouldn't continue great if we could get a Canadian on board? If a Canadian could be sent tens of millions of miles into the dark void of space. And as we all as a nation watch on television and together say aloud: "Bon voyage, Carolyn Parrish!""

"When I was in school, I dreamed about becoming a psychiatrist or a ballerina. Like most girls I would dream about being a movie star too. But those dreams are the impossible kind, the kind you don't really set your heart on."

"I guess you could say that I was somewhat withdrawn from my classmates. I spent a good deal of time being a loner. I suppose that had something to do with the way we lived — always on the move, never living in one town very long. It's very hard to make lasting friendships that way. And my father was rather strict with me and my two younger sisters. He insisted on proper behaviour and very often vetoed our choices of boyfriends. There was always a curfew whenever my sisters or I would go out on a date — we had to be home on time or else. But I never resented his authority. In fact, I'm thankful for my strict upbringing; I feel it has helped me learn discipline — and that's very important in this business."

"Martin Ransohoff had to sell Roman on the idea of even considering me for the film. He arranged for the two of us to have dinner. Roman never said a word to me, we just sat there and ate and he just looked at me. Then we had a second dinner meeting and the same thing happened. Later he took me to his apartment. He lit some candles and then excused himself and left me standing there alone. A short while later he came storming into the room like a madman and he was wearing a Frankenstein mask. I let out a blood-curdling scream and while I was still crying from the scare, he was calling Ransohoff to tell him that the part in the film was mine."

"I can't play games. I have friends, older women, who tell me I'm foolish to let Roman know how deeply I care about him. They tell me all sorts of things like "keep a man guessing", "men become bored with too much devotion". They tell me I am being foolish. Well, foolish I am."

"Oh, that's silly! I'm not an anything . . . I'm just me. If I am sexy, it's just something I do naturally, like picking up a knife and fork to eat. I think people who try to be sexy are the most unsexy people in the world."

"I'd like to be a fairy princess — a little golden doll with gossamer wings, in a voile dress, adorned with bright, shiny things. I see that as something totally pure and beautiful. Everything that's realistic has some sort of ugliness in it. Even a flower is ugly when it wilts, a bird when it seeks its prey, the ocean when it becomes violent. I'm very sensitive to ugly situations. I'm quick to read people, and I pick up if someone's reacting to me as just a sexy blonde. At times like that, I freeze. I can be very alone at a party, on the set, or in general, if I'm not in harmony with things around me."

"Please — please don't kill me — I don't want to die. I just want to have my baby."

"I honestly don't understand the big fuss made over nudity and sex in films. It's silly. On TV, the children can watch people murdering each other, which is a very unnatural thing, but they can't watch two people in the very natural process of making love. Now, really, that doesn't make any sense, does it?"

"Dear God, she was beautiful. Sharon was more beautiful as a teenager than she was in her twenties; in Europe people would turn around on the street just to look at her."

"I know I was horrible at times, I was. I really kept a tight rein on, I had to. I felt fine about Sharon being a star, as long as I was close by. You cannot protect your kids, you just can't. There are twenty-four hours in a day."

"Until you have lost a child, you don't know what it is. Parents are supposed to die first. When your child is gone before you for an abnormal reason, it creates a whole abnormal situation... It was three years before I could even... I couldn't even look at Roman. Because, you see, I still expected Sharon to be with him, so I was playing games in my mind... Roman really loved Sharon, I know that, and he was very, very grieved."

"This could destroy Roman. Marriage vows mean nothing to him but few men have adored a woman as much as he adored Sharon."

"It's weird. I always had the premonition that Sharon belonged to me just for a little while."

"She was the least hypocritical woman you could ever meet: once, when an executive told her that we should ask for single cabins in the transatlantic that brought us to the United States, she simply said, "Why? Everybody knows that we live together.""

"Sharon is too nice. She doesn't believe in her beauty. Once when I was very poor in Poland, I had got some beautiful shoes, and I immediately became ashamed of them. All my friends had plain, ordinary shoes, and I was embarrassed to walk in front of them. That's how Sharon feels about her beauty. She's as embarrassed by it."

"I'm forced to mix with people of this industry and I can swear that is really difficult to meet people with her nature and her spirit. Generally, everybody is opportunistic here. Sharon had grace and charm; she knew how to make anybody's life easier. When somebody was busy, she was there in a discreet manner to serve you a drink or a coffee."

"Without her I feel lost, I can't explain this in words. However there are things that I just can't stand thinking of; the way she and our son died."

"Sharon — it was fantastic what they were attributing to her. In death, they made a monster out of her. A monster out of the sweetest, most innocent, lovable human being. She was kindness itself to everybody and everything around her — people, animals, everything. She just didn't have a bad bone in her body. She was a unique person. It's difficult to describe her character. She was just utterly good, the kindest human being I've ever met, with an extreme patience. To live with me was proof of her patience, because to be near me must be an ordeal. She never had a bad temper, she was never moody. She enjoyed being a wife. The press and the public knew of her physical beauty, but she also had a beautiful soul, and this is something that only her friends knew about."

"Sharon Tate came up and introduced herself. She said, quietly, "I must tell you something before we start working together. I can't act, but I somehow get by without anyone realizing, so don't worry.""

"Sharon Tate is divine, a real find. Just wait and see what happens when the critics and public see her in Valley of the Dolls. Sharon has everything Marilyn Monroe had - and more. She has the fascinating, yet wholly feminine strength of a Dietrich or a Garbo, a classically beautiful face, an exciting figure, the kind of sex appeal and personality appeal to become as glittering a star as Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, Lana Turner, Elizabeth Taylor."

"While I was working on Downward Spiral, I was living in the house where Sharon Tate was killed. Then one day I met her sister. It was a random thing, just a brief encounter. And she said: "Are you exploiting my sister's death by living in her house?" For the first time, the whole thing kind of slapped me in the face. I said, "No, it's just sort of my own interest in American folklore. I'm in this place where a weird part of history occurred." I guess it never really struck me before, but it did then. She lost her sister from a senseless, ignorant situation that I don't want to support. When she was talking to me, I realized for the first time, "What if it was my sister?" I thought, "Fuck Charlie Manson." I went home and cried that night. It made me see there's another side to things, you know?"

"Sharon was more than just stunning to look at. She wasn't naive or stupid or a cliche starlet. What had impressed me most about her, quite apart from her exceptional beauty, was the sort of radiance that springs from a kind and gentle nature; she had obvious hang-ups yet seemed completely liberated. I'd never met anyone like her before."

"There was far more to Sharon than a lovely face and a sexy figure. What enchanted me about her as much as anything was her immutable good nature, her high spirits, her love of people and animals-of life itself. Over-demonstrative, over-solicitous women had always made me uneasy, but Sharon struck the perfect balance between affection and concern. Though more a spectator than a participant in our gags and shenanigans, she had a great sense of humour. She was also a born housewife. Aside from cooking like a dream, she used to cut my hair, a skill acquired from Jay Sebring. She liked to pack my bag whenever I had to take a trip. She always knew exactly what to put in-so much so that I can never pack or unpack, even today, without thinking of her."

"She once told me to define my ideal woman: "You're it," I told her. She laughed. "Come on!" "Seriously," I said. "What would you like me to be that I'm not?" "Nothing," I said with complete sincerity. "I wouldn't want you different in any way.""

"Sharon Tate was my best friend. Once, we were roommates. She introduced me to my husband. She was the godmother to my baby daughter who is named for her. In the six years time that I knew her, she never said an unkind word about anyone."

"My friends used to tease me. 'How can you wake up in the morning and look at that face of hers?' It was a good question. Sharon was so over whelmingly, so incredibly beautiful that anyone not knowing her might think it took a lot to live with such a beauty. But you see that was another thing about Sharon. With all her beauty, everyone loved her. I never heard anyone say a bad word about her, not even another actress. And in this town that's not only a rarity, it's an impossibility!"

"Sharon was the type of a girl who had no defenses, no pretenses, she was just herself all the time... She was so trusting, so eager to accept people as they were, so generous... Sharon never shut her door to anyone."

"She always had a way of finding such goodness in others. If someone hurt her, she'd say, "Oh, Sheliah, I'm sure they didn't mean to.' She'd always make excuses for others. Sharon was just totally loving and also totally vulnerable. She was just a remarkable person, she never gave up on anybody."

"As far as Sharon's marriage was concerned, all I can tell you is that Sharon and Roman were in love. They were a combination of beauty and genius."

"She was always going out on a limb for everyone. Everyone but herself. There was an ethereal quality about her. She had this thing I sometimes wished I'd had, even though I knew that eventually it might be bad for me. Do you understand? She had this kind of beauty and fragility, and you just knew she was bound to get hurt because of it. But still you couldn't help but admiring that quality in her. She was just such a special person."

"In just the last few months Sharon was beginning to come into her own. She never cared about being beautiful. She never even really cared about acting. She just wanted to love and be loved. And have her baby. I know that if she'd lived and had the baby everything would have been different for her. Because that is what Sharon really wanted. She was just a little girl from Texas who was so incredibly beautiful that she got swept up in all of the Hollywood nonsense. But all she ever wanted was what every woman wants — a man to love and a baby of her own. I can't believe that the murderers knew her. To know Sharon, to really know her, was to love her. There is just no way that anyone who knew her could have hurt her so."

"The First Amendment is national in scope and, as the Supreme Court said in Tinker, it does not stop at the schoolhouse door. Not all children are the same. Is a 17-year-old on the eve of his 18th birthday the same as a five-year-old? It is not the responsibility of librarians, or online content providers for that matter, to determine what is appropriate. We are at the very beginning of how we will handle this new medium."

"You should have access to ideas and information regardless of your age. If anyone is going to limit or guide a young person, it should be the parent or guardian — and only the parent or guardian."

"Many libraries are digging in their heels and saying, "We are not going to add filtering mechanisms.""

"We want to provide as much information as we can, and say to our users: "It is all here. You make the choice.""

"I have a real problem when people say, "Well I walked by and you should have seen what was on the computer screen." Well, don't look, sweetie. It's none of your business. Avert your eyes."

"We know that there are children out there whose parents do not take the kind of interest in their upbringing and in their existence that we would wish, but I don't think censorship is ever the solution to any problem, be it societal or be it the kind of information or ideas that you have access to."

"Material that might be illegal is such a minuscule part of what is available that we have to remember — and I mean not only librarians but everybody has to remember not to let it overshadow the incredible wealth of information that is available in this medium."

"For those of us in this battle, we clearly understand one thing — that when left up to "local" decision-making, it's still the ALA policy/philosophy of "no filters" that often triumphs. Local folks are not having their concerns taken seriously. I hear this repeatedly from individuals who contact us asking what they can do because they're up against an ALA wall. Does 'W' understand this? His wife is a librarian."

"We know for a fact that the library is the main access point to the Internet outside of the home and workplace. Particularly for young people, information about AIDS, sexuality, suicide could mean the difference between life and death. This law keeps us from giving people access to the information they need."

"I would have felt better if she had followed the Florida law. I suspect most people faced with the same situation would have done what she did."

"Blocking material leads to censorship. That goes for pornography and bestiality, too. If you don't like it, don't look at it... Every time I hear someone say, I want to protect the children, I want to pull my hair out."

"I have always found it a little strange that the majority of schools are utilizing filters. It seems to me that this is the environment where filters would not be used because the students are so carefully monitored, the activities in which they engage all go toward the same goals of education, and this is the very place where young people should be learning about information and its uses, in other words, where they should be learning information literacy.A recent National Research Center report, commissioned by Congress, clearly stated that information and media literacy are the most important things we can teach our children in order to truly protect them. Instead of placing barriers around the swimming pool, we must teach children to swim. We must teach children to find and use accurate information."

"A librarian is not a legal process. There is not librarian in the country — unless she or he is a lawyer — who is in the position to determine what he or she is looking at is indeed child pornography."

"I have heard some horror stories."

"It's a public library. If you don't like the book, magazine, CD-ROM or film, put it down and pick up something else. Libraries provide choice. Our responsibility is to have in our collection a broad range of ideas and information."

"I get very concerned when we start hearing people who want to convert this country into a safe place for children. I am adult. I want available what I need to see."

"Toni Morrison is challenged regularly because she is a black author who writes about the real world. She speaks with so much knowledge about black issues she can't be accused of creating these (issues). People find these issues threatening."

"Stewart: Living. Living. Everyday living. At home, in the garden, around the house, with the kids, um, on vacation, and it has always been for me a very serious subject. But to persuade other people that it's a serious subject, not my readers, not my, not my followers, I don't want to call them followers, my friends, but to persuade..."

"Rose: But the world is full of Martha wannabes."

"Stewart: Well, that's great because we're all trying to do the same thing. Live well."

"It's not easy, though, singing upside down in a headstand on a raised platform with your unfettered breasts hitting you in the chin."

"I'm a short woman with a pretty good body and large breasts — that's not what I think of as sexy."

"You either know fashion or you don't."

"If you look at any great fashion photograph out of context, it will tell you just as much about what's going on in the world as a headline in The New York Times."

""[The democratization of luxury] means more people are going to get better fashion. And the more people who can have fashion, the better."

"Fashion's not about looking back. It's always about looking forward."

"Anna happens to be a friend of mine, a fact which is of absolutely no help in coping with the cold panic that grips me whenever we meet."

"The notion that Anna would want something done "now" and not "shortly" is accurate."

"When I was a media reporter, there were many high-profile editors, and God knows they had big egos, but you could still get them on the phone ... Remnick, Carter, Fuller, even Martha Stewart. But Wintour? She just never talked to peons like us ... It was beneath her. And all the while I'm thinking, "Who is this skank?" She plays up this aristocratic, Marie Antoinette "Let them eat cake" routine, but, excuse me, can I get some proof that she holds a title of nobility that goes back to the 13th century? No. All she does is edit a magazine. That's it. So what's with the royalty routine? . . . I mean, for Christ's sake, the woman slept with Bob Marley, one of the most soulful people ever to walk the face of the earth. If that didn't spiritualize her, nothing would ... Wintour will be escorted by eunuchs to a place in hell run entirely by large rats."

"In a sea of women's glossies that purport to be about fashion but publish earnest articles chronicling the author's quest for self-actualization, Vogue stands apart. The voluminous fashion pages are arty, original, and sophisticated, shot by talented photographers like Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn, and Steven Meisel. Most of us read Vogue not with the intention of buying the wildly expensive clothes, but because doing so educates our eye and hones our taste, similar to the way eating gourmet food refines the palate. This is a pleasure enabled by Wintour's ruthless aesthetic, her refusal to participate in the democratizing tendency of most of her competitors. To deny her that privilege is to deny her readers the privilege of fantasy in the form of beautifully photographed Paris couture"

"I've gone back to the Frick since then to look at her and at the two other Vermeers. Vermeers, after all, are hard to come by, and the one in Boston has been stolen. The other two are self-contained paintings. The people in them are looking at each other -- the lady and her maid, the soldier, and his sweetheart. Seeing them is peeking at them through a hole in a wall. And the wall is made of light -- that entirely credible yet unreal Vermeer light. Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them, as are the maid with the letter and the soldier with the hat. The girl at her music sits in another sort of light, the fitful, overcast light of life, by which we see ourselves and others only imperfectly, and seldom."

"Lunatics are similar to designated hitters. Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can't go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside."

"Is this the type of friend or lover I want to have? I ask myself every time I meet someone new. Charming but shallow; good-hearted but a bit conventional; too handsome for his own good; fascinating but probably unreliable; and so forth. I guess I've had my share of unreliable. More than my share? How many would constitute more than my share?"

"In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves."

"Naked, we needed protection, and the hospital protected us. Of course, the hospital had stripped us naked in the first place—but that just underscored its obligation to shelter us. And the hospital fulfilled its obligation. Somebody in our families had to pay a good deal of money for that: sixty dollars (1967 dollars) a day just for the room; therapy, drugs, and consultations were extra. Ninety days was the usual length of mental-hospital insurance coverage, but ninety days was barely enough to get started on a visit to McLean. My workup alone took ninety days. The price of several of those college educations I didn’t want was spent on my hospitalization."

"People ask, How did you get in there? What they really want to know is if they are likely to end up in there as well. I can't answer the real question. All I can tell them is, It's easy. Most people pass over incrementally, making a series of perforations in the membrane between here and there until an opening exists. And who can resist an opening?"

"I got better and Daisy didn't and I can't explain why. Maybe I was just flirting with madness the way I flirted with my teachers and classmates. I wasn't convinced I was crazy, though I feared I was. Some people say that having any conscious opinion on the matter is a mark of sanity, but I'm not sure that's true. I still think about it. I'll always have to think about it."

"Suicide is a form of murder—premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the motive. A successful suicide demands good organization and a cool head, both of which are usually incompatible with the suicidal state of mind."

"It’s important to cultivate detachment. One way to do this is to practice imagining yourself dead, or in the process of dying. If there’s a window, you must imagine your body falling out the window. If there’s a knife, you must imagine the knife piercing your skin. If there’s a train coming, you must imagine your torso flattened under its wheels. These exercises are necessary to achieving the proper distance. The motive is paramount. Without a strong motive, you’re sunk. My motives were weak: an American-history paper I didn’t want to write and the question I’d asked months earlier, Why not kill myself? Dead, I wouldn’t have to write the paper. Nor would I have to keep debating the question."

"It was a spring day, the sort that gives people hope: all soft winds and delicate smells of warm earth. Suicide weather."

"When she’d been with us a month or so, Lisa Cody got a diagnosis. She was a sociopath too. She was happy, because she wanted to be like Lisa in all things. Lisa was not so happy, because she had been the only sociopath among us. “We are very rare,” she told me once, “and mostly we are men.”"

"Jerry was willowy and worried. He had one good trick. Now and then, someone with a lot of privileges was allowed to leave the hospital in a taxi. That person would say, “Jerry, call me a cab.” Jerry would say, “You’re a cab.” We loved this."

"A representative conversation with Dr. Wick: “Good morning. It has been decided that you were compulsively promiscuous. Would you like to tell me about that?” “No.” This is the best of several bad responses, I’ve decided. “For instance, the attachment to your high school English teacher.” Dr. Wick always uses words like attachment. “Uh?” “Would you like to tell me about that?” “Um. Well. He drove me to New York.” That was when I realized he was interested. He brought along a wonderful vegetarian lunch for me. “But that wasn’t when it was.” “What? When what was?” “When we fucked.” (Flush.) “Go on.” “We went to the Frick. I’d never been there. There was this Vermeer, see, this amazing painting of a girl having a music lesson—I just couldn’t believe how amazing it was—” “So when did you—ah—when was it?” Doesn’t she want to hear about the Vermeer? That’s what I remember. “What?” “The—ah—attachment. How did it start?” “Oh, later, back home.” Suddenly I know what she wants. “I was at his house. We had poetry meetings at his house. And everybody had left, so we were just sitting there on the sofa alone. And he said, ‘Do you want to fuck?’ ” (Flush.) “He used that word?” “Yup.” He didn’t. He kissed me. And he’d kissed me in New York too. But why should I disappoint her? This was called therapy."

"Most of us saw our therapists every day. Cynthia didn’t; she had therapy twice a week and shock therapy once a week. And Lisa didn’t go to therapy. She had a therapist, but he used her hour to take a nap. If she was extremely bored, she’d demand to be taken to his office, where she’d find him snoozing in his chair. “Gotcha!” she’d say. Then she’d come back to the ward. The rest of us traipsed off day after day to exhume the past."

"The world didn’t stop because we weren’t in it anymore; far from it. Night after night tiny bodies fell to the ground on our TV screen: black people, young people, Vietnamese people, poor people—some dead, some only bashed up for the moment. There were always more of them to replace the fallen and join them the next night. Then came the period when people we knew—not knew personally, but knew of—started falling to the ground: Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy. Was that more alarming? Lisa said it was natural. “They gotta kill them,” she explained. “Otherwise it’ll never settle down.”"

"Often an entire family is crazy, but since an entire family can’t go into the hospital, one person is designated as crazy and goes inside. Then, depending on how the rest of the family is feeling, that person is kept inside or snatched out, to prove something about the family’s mental health."

"Every few months Torrey’s parents flew from Mexico to Boston to harangue her. She was crazy, she had driven them crazy, she was malingering, they couldn’t afford it, and so forth. After they left Torrey would give a report in her tired drawl. “Then Mom said, ‘You made me into an alcoholic,’ and then Dad said, ‘I’m going to see you never get out of this place,’ and then they sort of switched and Mom said, ‘You’re nothing but a junkie,’ and Dad said, ‘I’m not going to pay for you to take it easy in here while we suffer.’ ” “Why do you see them?” Georgina asked. “Oh,” said Torrey. “It’s how they show their love,” said Lisa. Her parents never made contact with her. The nurses agreed with Lisa. They told Torrey she was mature for agreeing to see her parents when she knew they were going to confuse her. Confuse was the nurses’ word for abuse."

"Later that day, when Alice was off having a Rorschach, I asked, “How can a person who’s never eaten honey have a family that can afford to send her here?” “Probably really incredibly crazy and interesting, so they let her in for less,” said Georgina."

"“A writer,” I said, when my social worker asked me what I planned to do when I got out of the hospital. “I’m going to be a writer.” “That’s a nice hobby, but how are you going to earn a living?” My social worker and I did not like each other. I didn’t like her because she didn’t understand that this was me, and I was going to be a writer; I was not going to type term bills or sell au gratin bowls or do any other stupid things."

"Borderline Personality Disorder* An essential feature of this disorder is a pervasive pattern of instability of self-image, interpersonal relationships, and mood, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts. A marked and persistent identity disturbance is almost invariably present. This is often pervasive, and is manifested by uncertainty about several life issues, such as self-image, sexual orientation, long-term goals or career choice, types of friends or lovers to have, and which values to adopt."

"Quite often social contrariness and a generally pessimistic outlook are observed. Alternation between dependency and self-assertion is common."

"“The person often experiences this instability of self-image as chronic feelings of emptiness or boredom.” My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous. A partial list follows. I could not and did not want to: ski, play tennis, or go to gym class; attend to any subject in school other than English and biology; write papers on any assigned topics (I wrote poems instead of papers for English; I got F’s); plan to go or apply to college; give any reasonable explanation for these refusals."

"My self-image was not unstable. I saw myself, quite correctly, as unfit for the educational and social systems."

"They did not put much value on my capacities, which were admittedly few, but genuine. I read everything, I wrote constantly, and I had boyfriends by the barrelful. “Why don’t you do the assigned reading?” they’d ask. “Why don’t you write your papers instead of whatever you’re writing—what is that, a short story?” “Why don’t you expend as much energy on your schoolwork as you do on your boyfriends?” By my senior year I didn’t even bother with excuses, let alone explanations. “Where is your term paper?” asked my history teacher. “I didn’t write it. I have nothing to say on that topic.” “You could have picked another topic.” “I have nothing to say on any historical topic.”"

"One of my teachers told me I was a nihilist. He meant it as an insult but I took it as a compliment."

"As far as I could see, life demanded skills I didn’t have."

"My classmates were spinning their fantasies for the future: lawyer, ethnobotanist, Buddhist monk (it was a very progressive high school). Even the dumb, uninteresting ones who were there to provide “balance” looked forward to their marriages and their children. I knew I wasn’t going to have any of this because I knew I didn’t want it. But did that mean I would have nothing? I was the first person in the history of the school not to go to college."

"I was that one who wore black and—really, I’ve heard it from several people—slept with the English teacher."

"And the college business: My parents wanted me to go, I didn’t want to go, and I didn’t go. I got what I wanted. Those who don’t go to college have to get jobs. I agreed with all this. I told myself all this over and over. I even got a job—my job breaking au gratin dishes. But the fact that I couldn’t hold my job was worrisome. I was probably crazy. I’d been skirting the idea of craziness for a year or two; now I was closing in on it."

"My family had a lot of characteristics—achievements, ambitions, talents, expectations—that all seemed to be recessive in me."

"Light like this does not exist, but we wish it did. We wish the sun could make us young and beautiful, we wish our clothes could glisten and ripple against our skins, most of all, we wish that everyone we knew could be brightened simply by our looking at them."

"When women are angry at men, they call them heartless. When men are angry at women, they call them crazy."

"I'm not as klutzy as I used to be... I've had visual therapy and all kinds of things to help, but I still wrap my purse around chair legs when I stand up to leave. I do ridiculous things on camera because I do them in my life all the time."

"Except for cases that clearly involve a homicidal maniac, the police like to believe murders are committed by those we know and love, and most of the time they're right--a chilling thought when you sit down to dinner with a family of five. All those potential killers passing their plates."

"Sometimes the hardest part of my job is the incessant reminder of the fact we’re all trying so assiduously to ignore: we are here temporarily … life is only ours on loan."

"No one with a happy childhood ever amounts to much in this world. They are so well adjusted, they never are driven to achieve anything."

"I don’t want her to have a cat because she’ll end up talking baby talk to the cat. That’s the way it is, and how can a P.I. do that?"

"Our family histories are like fairy tales we're told from a very early age. In the tale, we're cast as hero or victim, as the infant rescued or abandoned, discounted or deified. From this we form an image of ourselves and our relationship to the world. Often it's a story we act out over and over again, trying to make the ending come out right instead of the way it did."

"I don't want to say I'm envious of any other woman's body. It's a bad myth to perpetuate. Women have enough trouble liking themselves."

"Inspired by the great plebeian, my father, President Diosdado Macapagal, promulgated the Land Reform Law to emancipate the peasant from a feudal bondage to the soil."

"In 1986 Filipinos peacefully reclaimed their civil liberties in the people power revolution. Under the leadership of Corazon Aquino, we reaffirmed our commitment to freedom and democracy on a mere stretch of highway — with hardly a drop of blood shed or a shot fired in anger."

"Less Than Two Months After The State Of The Nation Address, On 9/11/2001, The World Changed. To the Basic Desires of Work, Food on Every Table, Home, and Education, We Add Peace."

"I am sorry."

"We have been fighting the longest running communist insurgency in history. We have been coming to grips with fundamentalist terrorism long before 9/11."

"The people want government that works for them at every level. They want good government that begins at their doorstep in the barangay, and does not end before the closed door of a bureaucrat in Metro Manila."

"On top of peace and investment, progress also demands good governance. I congratulate Donkoy Emano for the drop in reports of corruption for public contracts in Cagayan de Oro from 65% of firms last year to 38 this year. Also Rudy Duterte and the other leaders of Metro Davao led by Majority Leader Boy Nograles for a similar drop, 57% last year to 49 now. Things are coming together for Mindanao, a prelude to their readiness for eventual federalism."

"A president can be as strong as she wants to be."

"From Bonifacio at Balintawak to Cory Aquino at EDSA and up to today, we have struggled to bring power to the people, and this country to the eminence it deserves."

"Indeed, the 1960s was a time of radical change. So much was happening — in science and technology, religion, politics, culture, and society as a whole — and at a fast pace. Imagine how my curiosity was piqued by everything going on around me. If there was ever a time that I developed a love for learning, an ability to focus on responsibility, and to deliver on my own goals, it was then."

"Bill Clinton was my classmate. When the future 42nd President of the United States found out that Dad was president, he wrote his grandmother that his classmate was the first daughter of the Philippines! Half a century later, he wrote in our jubilee yearbook: "Our class produced three presidents, Alfredo Cristiano, whom I did not know, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whom I knew and liked.""

"The transition from academe to government was admittedly difficult. In the academe, I was an authority figure to my students. In government, I was servant to the public, sometimes equal to peers in the executive, but always outranked by those with mandates from the electorate. I learned to respect the civil service in deed as in thought."

"Johnny Ponce Enrile will surely go down in history as among the most formidable political figures of our time, truly a legend in his own time. To many, that legend is based on his role as the feared Secretary of National Defense during the martial law years era of President Marcos. In reality, through the sheer force of his intelligence, political skill and personal, he has grown beyond that legend to become perhaps the most enduring politician of our time, sometimes still feared, but always respected by friend and for alike for his political capability."

"As the events leading to EDSA Dos unfolded, former President Cory together with Cardinal Sin became my twin pillars of strength. She was a true mentor, for she had gone through it all before."

"One night early in my term as senator, an undersecretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways visited me at home. He asked me to nominate a contractor to handle my pork barrel projects, and I said I had none. An inherited staffer explained to me that her old boss used to get a commission from such projects, but I said I would not do that."

"Dirty politics has always been around, whenever and wherever there was a government to be won, with the spoils of power and patronage that come with it."

"Machinery is often of little value when the administration's standard bearer is behind in the surveys."

"E-VAT was the centerpiece of perhaps the greatest and most long-playing achievement of my presidency, fiscal reform management."

"Victory is a powerful word, but it often reeks of pride and hubris. Vengeance is sweet, but it is hateful. Vindication is my preferred word."

"The Philippines had to take the necessary bolder steps forward in the next six years. It was under this milieu that President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo unveiled in her inauguration in 2004 a 10-Point Legacy that included gaming the budget deficit, providing sufficient infrastructure and efficient delivery of services, decentralized development and livelihood promotion, computerization of elections, and arriving at sustained national harmony."

"Land for the landless was the battle cry of the late President Diosdado Macapagal, which his daughter espoused and followed in her presidency. Her administration distributed millions of hectares in private, public and ancestral lands to landless farmers and indigenous communities."

"You have a wonderful child. Then, when he's thirteen, gremlins carry him away and leave in his place a stranger who gives you not a moment's peace. You have to hang in there, because two or three years later, the gremlins will return your child and he will be wonderful again."

"If a man is pictured chopping off a woman's breast, it only gets an R rating; but if, God forbid, a man is pictured kissing a woman's breast, it gets an X rating. Why is violence more acceptable than tenderness?"

"I love Nature."

"God is a white Light, cosmic, gorgeous one..."

"Music for me is like a balsam. I always whish that when people are watching me or listening to me, they take with them this energy I receive from God."

"``The roses are a form of gratitude, it is my memory to the public. And the white clothes already comes from a long time. The white is the unification of all the colors and it symbolizes my spiritual master, that accompanies me always."

"I think an interpreter has to sing everything, to sing what wants to sing. It cannot be with that foolishness, that here in Brazil we face this thing that when one records a song, later no one can rerecord it. This is madness, absurd. Music doesn't have an owner, the music doesn´t belong to anyone."

"Yes, I would, if they are the kind that shakes."

"The only person who could make me stop singing is the one who made me sing: God, the beauty up there!"

"When we are young we believe to be adults; when we are adults we believe to be young."

"Simone is one of the best singers in the world"

"If I had to choose a song to listen to before I died, it would be Simone singing Começar de novo."

"``When Simone opens her arms on the stage no one is more powerful on MPB´´."

"``I only met Simone last year and it was like meeting Sarah Vaughan or Dinah Washington. She has a very strong identity, she sings with a lot of passion and grace.´´"

"``I Like Simone very much. Potentially, there is a talent to bloom out. She is a beautiful woman, her repertory is very good and she is very well orientated by Flavio Rangel and Nelson Ayres´´."

"``Your voice is extraordinary and doesn´t need support. When you are sentimental, that´s when you are at your best. Your talent is revealed by this.´´"

"``You are generous and your voice is blessed. When I was sick with back problems, you even made a promise to quit smoking if I´d recover. Only a great friend can do this.´´"

"``The first thing that comes to my senses is your tone of your voice, remarkable one, warm, heady and involving.´´"

"``I am specially moved by her performance on the stage. She has an enormous capacity of expressing hersel´´"

"``Her songs are a part of my life, from Começar de Novo (Malu Mulher). I like to watch her on the stage. She transmits security, but is also strong and sweet.´´"

"``How wonderful it is to celebrate a 27 years career! When you moved from basket ball to music, the world of sports lost a great player, but music won a great singer. You transmit good vibrations, a wonderful energy on the stage.´´"

"A wonderfully funny letter was sent to me signed by a fraternity in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S., medical school; the fraternity for doctors had voted me the body on which they would most like to operate."

""Ilsa" has been such a minor part of my career, that I find it amusing that some persons only know me for that association."

"Thank you for your loyalty, and many kindnesses through the years...You have one by one validated my modest life as an actress, far beyond my personal fulfillment. Dare to pursue your own positive dreams. I value each of you."

"Get rid of those terrible jeans that everybody else wears. And wear something different for a change, so you don't just look like a clone."

"We are entering the dimension where we have control - the inside."

"Is it true? Can you absolutely know that it's true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without the thought?"

"The Work is merely four questions; it's not even a thing. It has no motive, no strings. It's nothing without your answers. These four questions will join any program you've got and enhance it. Any religion you have - they'll enhance it. If you have no religion, they will bring you joy. And they'll burn up anything that isn't true for you. They'll burn through to the reality that has always been waiting."

"When I argue with reality, I lose—but only 100% of the time."

"You move totally away from reality when you believe that there is a legitimate reason to suffer."

"An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering."

"No one can hurt me—that’s my job."

"Sanity doesn’t suffer, ever."

"If I had a prayer, it would be this: “God spare me from the desire for love, approval, and appreciation. Amen.”"

"You either believe what you think or you question it. There’s no other choice."

"If I think you’re my problem, I’m insane."

"When I am perfectly clear, what is is what I want."

"Arguing with reality is like trying to teach a cat to bark—hopeless."

"How do I know that I don’t need what I want? I don’t have it."

"Forgiveness is realizing that what you thought happened, didn’t."

"Everything happens for me, not to me."

"Reality is always kinder than the story we tell about it."

"I don’t let go of concepts—I question them. Then they let go of me."

"Gratitude is what we are without a story."

"When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet."

"For me, reality is God, because it rules."

"Personalities don’t love—they want something."

"You are what exists before all stories. You are what remains when the story is understood."

"I’m a lover of what is, not because I’m a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality."

"Everyone is a mirror image of yourself—your own thinking coming back at you."

"“I don’t know” is my favorite position."

"What is is. You don’t get a vote. Haven’t you noticed?"

"Until you look forward to criticism, your Work’s not done."

"Thoughts aren’t personal. They just appear, like raindrops. Would you argue with a raindrop?"

"There are no new stressful thoughts. They’re all recycled."

"Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you’ve attached to something not true for you."

"We do only three things in life: we sit, we stand, we lie horizontal. The rest is just a story."

"The teacher you need is the person you’re living with."

"Everyone and everything is doing its job perfectly—no mistake."

"Ultimately, I am all I can know."

"Until we know that death is equal to life, we live in fear."

"There are no physical problems—only mental ones."

"We never make a decision. When the time is right, the decision makes itself."

"The miracle of love comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment."

"The last story: God is everything, God is good."

"When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done."

"Seeking love keeps you from the awareness that you already have it—that you are it."

"Have you asked you?"

"We say to others only what we need to hear."

"Nothing you believe is true. To know this is freedom."

"If you want to see the love of your life, look in the mirror."

"Reality is always the story of a past, and what I love about the past is—it’s over."

"We suffer only until we realize that we can’t know anything."

"You can only see what you believe—nothing else is possible."

"I could find only three kinds of business in the world—mine, yours, and God’s. Whose business are you in?"

"No one has ever been angry at another human being—we’re only angry at our story of them."

"Just keep coming home to yourself. You are the one you’ve been waiting for."

"The perfect world is created when the mind is free to see it."

"Would you rather be right or free?"

"In my experience, it takes only one person to have a successful relationship, and that's me."

"Don't be careful. You could hurt yourself."

"Defense is the first act of war."

"Sharron Angle: I feel that the Second Amendment is the right to keep and bear arms for our citizenry. This not for someone who's in the military. This not for law enforcement. This is for us. And in fact when you read that Constitution and the founding fathers, they intended this to stop tyranny. This is for us when our government becomes tyrannical... Bill Manders: If we needed it at any time in history, it might be right now. Sharron Angle: Well it's to defend ourselves. And you know, I'm hoping that we're not getting to Second Amendment remedies. I hope the vote will be the cure for the Harry Reid problems."

"Bill Manders: We have domestic enemies. We have home-born homegrown enemies in our system. And I for one think we have some of those enemies in our own, in the walls of the Senate and the Congress. Sharron Angle: Yes. I think you're right, Bill."

"Sharron Angle: I'm not a witch. I'm nothing you've heard. I'm you."

"Sharron Angle: Right now, we say in a traditional home one parent stays home with the children and the other provides the financial support for that family. That is the acceptable and right thing to do. If we begin to expand that, not only do we dilute the resources that are available, we begin to dilute things like health care, retirement, all the things offered to families that help them be a family."

"Bill Manders: I, too, am pro life but I'm also pro choice, do you understand what I say when I mean that. Sharron Angle: I'm pro responsible choice. There is choice to abstain, choice to do contraception. There are all kinds of good choices. Bill Manders: Is there any reason at all for an abortion? Sharron Angle: Not in my book. Bill Manders: So, in other words, rape and incest would not be something? Sharron Angle: You know, I'm a Christian, and I believe that God has a plan and a purpose for each one of our lives and that he can intercede in all kinds of situations and we need to have a little faith in many things."

"Well, I qualified for my CCW with a Dirty Harry cannon so, so maybe that tells you a little bit, but you know, our Founding Fathers, they put that Second Amendment in there for a good reason and that was for the people to protect themselves against a tyrannical government, and in fact Thomas Jefferson said it’s good for a country to have a revolution every twenty years. I hope that’s not where we’re going, but you know, if this Congress keeps going the way it is, people are really looking toward those Second Amendment remedies and saying, ‘my goodness what can we do to turn this country around’ and I’ll tell ya, the first thing we need to do is take Harry Reid out — and it’s not just Nevadans that need to get in this game, we need to all over the nation begin to support those candidates that we believe in, like I said, that have walked the walk, that know what’s really at stake here."

"They [Republicans] say, 'You're too conservative.' Was Thomas Jefferson too conservative? I'm tired of some people calling me wacky."

"And I knew that all along when I started praying over a year ago over it. And this just seemed to be the battle that I needed to go to war with. And I need warriors to stand beside me. You know, this is a war of ideology, a war of thoughts and of faith. And we need people to really stand for faith and trust, not hope and change."

"We’re right to that point in the graph where it says, “government dependency.” And we know that once we have a majority that are dependent upon the government, we will lose our freedom; it says we go into bondage. That’s the next stage. Our Founders warned against this. They said don’t… that your liberty is only as secure as the people are. Because once they, um, get the ability to vote themselves entitlements from the largesse of the government, liberty is done; freedom is over with."

"And these programs that you mentioned — that Obama has going with Reid and Pelosi pushing them forward — are all entitlement programs built to make government our god. And that's really what's happening in this country is a violation of the First Commandment. We have become a country entrenched in idolatry, and that idolatry is the dependency upon our government. We're supposed to depend upon God for our protection and our provision and for our daily bread, not for our government."

"People ask me, "What are you going to do to develop jobs in your state?" Well, that's not my job as a US senator to bring industry to the state. That’s the lieutenant governor’s job, that’s your state senators’ and assemblymen’s job. That’s your secretary of state’s job, to make a climate in the state that says, ‘Y’all come.’"

"Jon Ralston: How would you have voted on that bill to extend unemployment benefits? Sharron Angle: I would have voted no, because the truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does."

"Jon Ralston: So you're saying if people lose their jobs through no fault of their own, as many have during this recession, Sharron Angle's solution is to cut their unemployment benefits so low so they're somehow gonna go out and find jobs that don't exist? How does that make any sense? Sharron Angle: There are jobs that do exist. That's what we're saying, is that there are jobs. But those are entry-level jobs."

"Government shouldn't be doing that to a private company. And I think you named it clearly: It's a slush fund."

"Alan Stock: What do you say, then, to a young girl—I am going to place it as he said it—when a young girl is raped by her father, let's say, and she is pregnant. How do you explain this to her in terms of wanting her to go through the process of having the baby? Sharron Angle: I think that two wrongs don't make a right. And I have been in the situation of counseling young girls, not 13 but 15, who have had very at risk, difficult pregnancies. And my counsel was to look for some alternatives, which they did. And they found that they had made what was really a lemon situation into lemonade."

"You can make more money on unemployment than you can going down and getting one of those jobs that is an honest job, but it doesn't pay as much. And so that's what's happened to us is that we have put in so much entitlement into our government that we really have spoiled our citizenry and said you don't want the jobs that are available."

"The whole point of an interview is to … earn something with it and I'm not going to earn anything from people who are there to badger me and use my words to batter me with."

"[in mainstream media outlets] There's no earnings for me there."

"But I'm a mainstreamer. I think that, you know, when we start talking about the Tea Party, people want to marginalize that into some kind of organization or party, but it really isn't."

"Sharron Angle: We needed to have the press be our friend. Carl Cameron: Wait a minute. Hold on a second. To be your friend…? Sharron Angle: Well, truly— Carl Cameron: That sounds naive. Sharron Angle: Well, no. We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported."

"People have always said - those words, 'too conservative,' is fairly relative. I'm sure that they probably said that about Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. And truly, when you look at the Constitution and our founding fathers and their writings, the things that made this country great, you might draw those conclusions: That they were conservative. They were fiscally conservative and socially conservative."

"You know, I am mainstream America, and it really doesn't matter what party you're in. When you call your children and you say 'How are you?' - and what you are really asking is, 'Do you still have your job? And are you able to make the mortgage payment?', That resonates across the state, not across party lines."

"When I said privatize, that's what I meant. That I thought we would just have to go to the private sector for a template on how this is supposed to be done. However, I've since been studying and Chile has done this."

"My thoughts are these, first of all, Dearborn, Michigan, and Frankford, Texas are on American soil, and under constitutional law. Not Sharia law. And I don't know how that happened in the United States. It seems to me there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing a foreign system of law to even take hold in any municipality or government situation in our United States."

"Q: Why is it that in all of your commercials you have the image of Latinos? What do you see when you hear, and I quote, "illegal aliens?" Sharron Angle: I think that you're misinterpreting those commercials. I'm not sure that those are Latinos in that commercial. What it is, is a fence and there are people coming across that fence. What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That's the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists; we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they're coming. So we have to secure all of our borders and that's what that was about, is border security. Not just our southern border, but our coastal border and our northern border."

"So that's what we want is a secure and sovereign nation, and, you know, I don't know that all of you are Latino. Some of you look a little more Asian to me. I don't know that. What we know, what we know about ourselves is that we are a melting pot in this country. My grandchildren are evidence of that. I'm evidence of that. I've been called the first Asian legislator in our Nevada State Assembly."

"Nathan Baca: If you want to be one of 100 U.S. Senators that are deciding on war powers and on ratifying treaties, which is what a Senator has to do, you have to answer these questions. Sharron Angle: Well, certainly. And I'll answer those questions when I'm the senator."

"Nathan Baca: You are literally staying silent about the two wars that we're in right now. Sharron Angle: You know, the two wars that we're in right now, is exactly what we're in."

"Every policy that the United States government has in place needs to be a policy that creates jobs for Americans."

"We need to have policies that stimulate the economy, and the economy is stimulated when business feels confident that we can put people back to work."

"Free market alternatives, which offer retirement choices to employees and employers, must be developed and offered to those still in their wage earning years, as the Social Security system is transitioned out."

"For nearly twenty years, Sharron Angle has been in favor of Yucca Mountain, as a profitable center for reprocessing, not a nuclear landfill and dumping ground."

"Cap and Trade, which is based on an unscientific hysteria over the man-caused global warming hoax, steps over the constitutional boundaries of the federal government and is merely another way to tax the people."

"The U.N. continually threatens U.S. sovereignty, with endless rhetoric and treaties and it has now become the "umpire" on fraudulent science, such as global warming. The United State needs to withdraw from the United Nations and work solely with America's willing allies."

"Sharron Angle worked to pass the Constitutional Protection of Marriage Act in Nevada, which defines marriage as between one man and one woman, and Sharron Angle supports the Federal Marriage Amendment to do the same."

"Sharron Angle believes that the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated. The Department of Education is unconstitutional and should not be involved in education, at any level."

"Sharron Angle believes that campaign finance limitations must come from the candidates themselves."

"Oh, it's quite all right, we curse quite a lot around here."

"English students don't spend much time on their studies. They're more interested in partying and having fun."

"What I have learned from my travels is that by listening at least as much as we speak, and by trying to understand before we act, we perhaps stand a better chance of coming up with the right answers…"

"My grandfather, P Morton Shand, […] declared that ‘A woman who cannot make soup should not be allowed to marry’. You might not agree with his rants, but there was no doubting his passion for proper food"

"Reading is exciting. Reading is fun. Reading is cool. There is nothing quite like the thrill of opening a book and being drawn into another world to meet new people and to discover their stories - it’s like making new friends"

"Being a friendly neighbour has always been the keystone of community life and just saying “hello” can sometimes make a huge difference"

"Oh, oh, very badly. I would love to start again but maybe I’m too old"

"In a world where so many things have changed for the better, there are –sadly - still many vulnerable, forgotten and neglected children. Each one of them has a unique story"

"There are lots of things I do feel strongly about, but if I speak about them I will be on my best behaviour."

"As a half-resident of Wiltshire I feel very loyal to the county."

"Poetry is like time travel, and poems take us to the heart of the matter"

"In organizations, real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions."

"Change always involves a dark night when everything falls apart. Yet if this period of dissolution is used to create new meaning, then chaos ends and new order emerges."

"To name is to make visible."

"Scott London: How did you begin to explore the connection between management and science? Meg Wheatley: I didn't have an interest in the new science. I had a realization that in my profession — which was vaguely labeled "organizational change," "organizational development," or "management consulting" in general — none of us knew how organizations change. When I talked to other consultants, I noticed that if we had an organizational change effort that was successful, it felt like a miracle to us. I realized with a great start one day that we weren't even geared up for success. It didn't matter that we didn't know how to change organizations. We were all professionals who didn't hope to achieve what we were selling or suggesting to clients. The field was really moribund. At the same time — and this is the serendipity of life — I had a friend and educator whom I had worked with for many years who said casually one day "Meg, if you're interested in systems thinking, you should be reading quantum physics." He didn't know where I was in my despair over my professional failings. But I said, "Okay, give me a book list." He gave me ten titles. I read eight of those and I was off. I always credit him with that casual, helpful comment that changed my life."

"I was reading of chaos that contained order; of information as the primal, creative force; of systems that, by design, fell apart so they could renew themselves; and of invisible forces that structured space and held complex things together. These were compelling, evocative ideas, and they gave me hope, even if they did not reveal immediate solutions."

"We have created trouble for ourselves in organizations by confusing control with order. This is no surprise, given that for most of its written history, leadership has been defined in terms of its control functions."

"The things we fear most in organizations - fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances - need not be signs ofan impending disorder that will destroy us. Instead, fluctuations are the primary source of creativity."

"We will need to become savvy about how to build relationships, how to nurture growing, evolving things. All of us will need better skills in listening, communicating, and facilitating groups, because these are the talents that build strong relationships."

"If vision is a field, think about what we could do differently to create one. We would do our best to get it permeating through the entire organization so that we could take advantage of its formative properties. All employees, in any part of the company, who bumped up against the field, would be influenced by it. Their behavior could be shaped as a result of “field meetings”, where their energy would link with the fields form to create behavior congruent with the organizations goals. In the absence of that field, in areas of the organization that hadn’t been reached, we could hold no expectation of desired behaviors. If the field hadn’t extended into that space, there would be nothing there to help behaviors materialize, no invisible geometry working on our behalf"

"Leadership is always dependent upon the context, but the context is established by the relationships."

"The dense and tangled web of life-the interconnected nature of reality--now reveals itself on a daily basis. Since September 11th, think about how much you've learned about people, nations, and ways of life that previously you'd known nothing about. We've been learning how the lives of those far away affect our own. We're beginning to realize that in order to live peacefully together on this planet, we need to be in new relationships, especially with those far-distant from us."

"I believe that our very survival depends upon us becoming better systems thinkers. How can we learn to see the systems we're participating in? How can we act intelligently when things remain fuzzy?"

"Here are a few principles I've learned. Start something, and see who notices it. It's only after we initiate something in a system that we see the threads that connect. Usually, someone we don't even know suddenly appears, either outraged or helpful."

"Relationships are all there is. Everything in the universe only exists because it is in relationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. We have to stop pretending we are individuals that can go it alone."

"There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about."

"In our daily life, we encounter people who are angry, deceitful, intent only on satisfying their own needs. There is so much anger, distrust, greed, and pettiness that we are losing our capacity to work well together."

"Whatever life we have experienced, if we can tell our story to someone who listens, we find it easier to deal with our circumstances."

"There is a simpler, finer way to organize human endeavor. I have declared this for many years and seen it to be true in many places. This simpler way is demonstrated to us in daily life, not the life we see on the news with its unending stories of human grief and horror, but what we feel when we experience a sense of life's deep harmony, beauty, and power, of how we feel when we see people helping each other, when we feel creative, when we know we're making a difference, when life feels purposeful."

"Over many years of work all over the world, I've learned that if we organize in the same way that the rest of life does, we develop the skills we need: we become resilient, adaptive, aware, and creative. We enjoy working together. And life's processes work everywhere, no matter the culture, group, or person, because these are basic dynamics shared by all living beings."

"Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful. It's amazing to me how much we do, but how little time we spend reflecting on what we just did."

"When we can lay down our fear and anger and choose responses other than aggression, we create the conditions for bringing out the best in us humans."

"In the past, it was easier to believe in my own effectiveness. If I worked hard, with good colleagues and good ideas, we could make a difference. But now, I sincerely doubt that."

"Meg Wheatley was thrown into the public spotlight in 1992 with the publication of Leadership and the New Science, a groundbreaking look at how new discoveries in quantum physics, chaos theory, and biology challenge our standard ways of thinking in organizations. It showed how our reliance on old, mechanistic models stand in the way of innovation and effective leadership."

"To people who've been looked at and considered beautiful, particularly women who relied on it so much... age is quite a challenge. The thing which you've always used, a power, is taken away from you."

"All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don't look at you. It's a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity."

"In the 1970s I was amazed to be talked about as a '60s sex symbol. I wasn't that person, as if I were a doll from the past. I had to learn to come to terms with that. It's funny, it's silly, the ridiculousness of having asked so much of celebrity. Then it becomes really interesting and very much part of the excitement of the life you’re living now, knowing you’re approaching the end of it."

"I'm not going to say she hasn't tried alcohol and drugs. She's gone through everything every other teenager does."

"I don't think I'll ever find anyone I'll love as much as I loved Elvis. It's pointless trying to compare him to anyone. Yes, some men I've been with have mattered to me, but Elvis was my first love, he'll be my last."

"Yes. I came to Washington to lobby Senators and Congressmen to co-sponsor in support of the PAST Act and I'm hoping by making this public people will join me to help me get this bill passed. Links are available for them to contact their Congressman saying they support the PAST Act. That's all they have to do. You would think this is a no-brainer, that this would pass but there IS opposition. The law was passed in 1970 to stop soring but Horse Industry (HIOs) found loopholes and continued soring. USDA is charged with enforcement of the Horse Protection Act, but as the result of a 1976 amendment to the act, the USDA has for decades certified the horse industry organization to conduct the majority of inspections at horse shows. This self regulation scheme has failed miserably and has to be abolished. USDA inspectors are threatened by exhibitors at horse shows and must be frequently accompanied by security. If they had nothing to hide (like covering the scarred legs with paint or taking off other paraphernalia when USDA inspectors are around) why aren't they welcomed? That's why being their own inspectors is not working."

"This is a great day for the Yakamas -- to get the land returned back for access to our fishing right areas. The younger generation will continue to exercise their Creator-given right to our very important salmon. The U.S. government promised us with their honorable word to uphold their trust responsibility. All Yakamas will benefit with this accomplishment by the current Tribal Council officials."

"People want change but not too much change. Finding that balance is tricky for every politician."

"Nancy Reagan became first lady during the height of the feminist movement, and women who were battling for their rights in a male-dominated world saw her as an anachronism. Reagan said her life began when she met her husband. The adoring look she focused on her Ronnie when they were in public became known as "the gaze," adding to the caricature of her as a rich Hollywood socialite who did not understand the concerns of a generation of women coming into their own as professionals and seeking equality. What her detractors failed to understand (and I was among them) was the substantive role she played behind the scenes at the White House in keeping her husband's presidency on track. She took the long view in looking after his legacy, intervening through favored surrogates to keep conservative ideologues from driving the agenda. Her insistence that no president could be considered great without reaching out to Soviet leaders trumped resistance from the right wing of the GOP. She was fiercely protective of her husband's image, less so of her own, and she paid the price. When some of her interventions became known, particularly in the personnel department, she was cast as Lady Macbeth — even though the firings she engineered won praise. … Years later, with the benefit of hindsight and after watching Hillary Clinton's failed effort to achieve health-care reform, I came to believe Nancy Reagan deserved a fairer assessment. I wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The Washington Post on Jan. 8, 1995, with the headline "Nancy with the centrist face: Derided as an elitist, Mrs. Reagan's impact was unequaled." I made the point that unlike Clinton, who took an office in the West Wing and was upfront about wanting to be a player, Reagan operated undercover, usually through a surrogate, and that she was a force for good. She rarely left fingerprints, but she got the job done, and her job was to play up her husband's strengths and cover for his weaknesses. She did both very well. The piece concluded with this line: "She is without doubt an effective First Lady, and she may yet win our hearts." Soon after I received a handwritten note from Mrs. Reagan saying, "I don't really know how to say this but when something very nice comes from an unexpected source, it's really appreciated — and if you see me in a different light now, I'm happy. I can only hope one day 'to win the heart.' " Later that same year, she cooperated with a NEWSWEEK cover about her reconciliation with daughter Patti Davis, and how the president's Alzheimer's disease had brought the family together after literally decades of turmoil. Another handwritten note arrived shortly after with the lighthearted comment, "We've got to stop meeting like this!" After sharing her thoughts and emotions on her family's difficult times, Reagan said, "Hopefully I'm close to 'winning the heart.' " In looking back at these notes, I realize how much it meant to her to gain a measure of affection after being treated so harshly in the public eye."

"It took her husband's long illness and her grace in caring for him to show her critics what she was made of. Rarely did she spend more than an hour or two away from him, and during the decade of his decline, she guarded his image, his legacy, and his dignity. As his cognitive powers slipped away, eldest son Michael reminded him that he used to be president. "How did I do?" Reagan replied, his characteristic humor and humility intact. In the 1994 letter to the American people in which the former president revealed his illness, he wrote, "I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage." In their life together, Ronald Reagan never worried about anything; Nancy worried about everything, carrying a burden few appreciated until the end. She didn't have his gift for storytelling, but she made sure all the parts were in place, and by honoring him, she was true to herself, a woman for all times."

"The central question about vegetarian diets used to be whether it was healthy to eliminate meat and other animal foods … Now, however, the main question has become whether it is healthier to be a vegetarian than to be a meat eater. … The answer to both questions, based on currently available evidence, seems to be yes. A properly planned vegetarian diet can provide all the essential nutrients, even for growing children … And, on the whole, vegetarians are less likely to be afflicted with the chronic diseases that are leading killers and cripplers in societies where meat is the centerpiece of the diet."

"Early findings from the most comprehensive large study ever undertaken of the relationship between diet and the risk of developing disease are challenging much of American dietary dogma. The Cornell–Oxford] study, being conducted in China, paints a bold portrait of a plant-based eating plan that is more likely to promote health than disease. The study can be considered the Grand Prix of epidemiology."

"Hypnosis is the epitome of mind-body medicine. It can enable the mind to tell the body how to react, and modify the messages that the body sends to the mind."

"I'm not a women's libber. Having a pretty girl running down the beach, then having her torn apart by a shark, is a lot more effective than having a flabby guy run down the beach and getting torn up. I don't think women are exploited as much as some women think they are"

"The only way to escape one's fate is to enjoy it."

"I would be harder, tougher. I would put myself about more. I should have mixed with more people which would have led to more opportunities. As I said, I had this sort of "keep away from me" look, barrier, whatever, and I guess people might have thought I was snooty, which I wasn't, but that was my way of just coping with things. Many stars come to sticky ends, so I think maybe it's just as well. At least I am still here, for which I'm grateful."

"I was totally star-struck as a youngster and incredibly shy, but I loved the theatre – especially pantomimes. After a failed audition for RADA, I worked as a trainee fashion buyer at Harrods, where they had an entertainments society and I performed in several of its productions. I took singing lessons and my teacher encouraged me to read The Stage, where I saw that chorus singers were needed for the musical The Belle Of New York. I got the job – much to my parents' horror, who wanted me to keep my respectable job, but I was determined to become an actress."

"When I look back, I've had an incredibly lucky life. Being tall with unusual looks helped, although I did build a barrier around myself early on because of shyness. I know I could have enjoyed my life a lot more then if I'd been the person I am today."

"I'm not really interested in building a reputation for myself. But I do care for what the company stands for. I believe in work and being connected to the world we live in."

"(Sitting at the Bar Quadronno in Milan's Quadronno district) I come here all the time! […] It's right next to my apartment, which is in the building where I grew up, and my mother is still there, on the first floor, and my brother is on the third floor, and it's right next to my children's school [...], and it's not too far from my office, and it's open all day and very late, every day. It's cute, isn't it?"

"If everyone wants to make things black, I'll make things red: it's stronger than me. Starting from this principle, I develop my thoughts, which I always express with shapes and colors. Never with slogans, because I believe politics should be approached in a more complex way."

"Cresciuta in Porta Romana, Miuccia Prada vi abita tuttora (risiede nello specifico in Corso di Porta Romana); non ci stupisce quindi che abbia deciso di aprire la sua Fondazione nell'adiacente quartiere di Corso Lodi."

"Our proposal that the age of consent be reduced is based on the belief that neither the police nor the criminal courts should have the power to intervene in a consenting sexual activity between two young people. It is clearly the case that a number of young people are capable of consenting to sexual activity and already do so."

"Any suggestion that I supported or condoned the vile crimes of child abusers is completely untrue. When Jack Dromey, as NCCL chairman in 1976, vigorously opposed PIE at the NCCL AGM, he did so with the full support of the Executive Committee and myself as general secretary. As the NCCL archives demonstrate, I consistently distinguished between consenting relationships between homosexual men, on the one hand, and the abuse of children on the other. NCCL in the 1970s, along with many others, was naive and wrong to accept PIE's claim to be a 'campaigning and counselling organisation' that 'does not promote unlawful acts'. As General Secretary then, I take responsibility for the mistakes we made. I got it wrong on PIE and I apologise for having done so. I should have urged the Executive Committee to take stronger measures to protect NCCL's integrity from the activities of PIE members and sympathisers and I deeply regret not having done so. ..."

"I became a vegetarian in 1969. … About eight and a half years ago, my husband and I decided to stop eating meat and then about six months later we stopped eating fish. … Partly because of my attitude towards health, and partly because of my husband's attitude toward animals. He's such an avid animal lover that, slaughtering them for food, he felt, was a worthless endeavor. I came to it from the point of view of someone who likes to be healthy, energetic, and vital. Together we both came to the same conclusions, but from different viewpoints, and eventually our reasons began to mingle. I began to share his attitude about animals and he began to appreciate the physical rewards of being a vegetarian. … I had two beautiful births as a vegetarian; they were great labors—no bleeding, no complications, no problems. The diet worked perfectly for me."

"Tallene overrasker meg ikke i det hele tatt. Mange innvandrere opplever at norske kvinner sender dem signaler om at de ønsker seksuell kontakt. Og da kan det fort gå galt. Mange norske kvinner har altfor dårlig kunnskap om ikke-vestlige menns kvinnesyn"

"Nobody has been able to come up with the source where I allegedly said the outrageous thing that has been attributed to me. My name is being misused, but not in Norway or Sweden or Denmark where my position on violence in the name of religion or culture is so well known that it would be absurd to attribute a defense of rape to me."

"Norwegian women must take responsibility for the fact that Muslim men find their manner of dress provocative. And since these men believe women are responsible for rape,the women must adapt to the multicultural society around them."

"It meant that anyone with a brown face in cities like Toronto, Vancouver was fair game for physical harassment as well as verbal harassment on the street. And so, you know, there were incidents every day. And I was a victim of many such incidents of not being served in stores or being roughed up by teenagers in blue jeans overalls in subway - on subway platforms or being, you know, thrown out of lobbies of fancy hotels if my white husband wasn't near me or being given secondary examination in airports or - racial profiling…"

"I totally consider myself an American writer, and that has been my big battle: to get to realize that my roots as a writer are no longer, if they ever were, among Indian writers, but that I am writing about the territory about the feelings, of a new kind of pioneer here in America. I’m the first among Asian immigrants to be making this distinction between immigrant writing and expatriate writing. Most Indian writers prior to this, have still thought of themselves as Indians, and their literary inspiration, has come from India. India has been the source, and home. Whereas I’m saying, those are wonderful roots, but now my roots are here and my emotions are here in North America…"

"I have tried very hard as a novelist to say, "Novels are about individuals and especially larger than life individuals." My protagonists are very feisty characters. And, you know, that there is no one unified story about the immigrant experience or the immigrant passage and what I hope I've done in DESIRABLE DAUGHTERS is show how fractured the responses to that whole odyssey of moving, pulling up your roots from your original country and re-rooting yourself in an adopted country is."

"I have been murdered and reborn at least three times; the very correct young woman I was trained to be, and was very happy being, is very different from the politicized, shrill, civil rights activist I was in Canada, and from the urgent writer that I have become in the last few years in the United States. I can't stop. It's a compulsive act for me. It's a kind of salvation, and the only thing that prevents me from being a Joyce Carol Oates, and I'm not talking about quality, but just that need to create, is schedule."

"That's the marvelous thing about the writing process: you don't know when and how a memory, a scrap of conversation overheard, an allusion or image, is suddenly going to surface and work itself into your story. (1996)"

"I believe that if you are literate, all literature that you expose yourself to is your heritage to claim"

"Where am I going? I don't want to know too far ahead. (1996)"

"Novelists aim for fullness of catharsis, not a political pamphlet. (1996)"

"An author focuses on a few individual characters, and hopes that a larger frisson of emotion and revelation comes across to the reader. (1996)"

"I am always amazed when reviewers or some literary critics lump all Asian American writers together as being a homogenous group. Whereas within the subcontinental group of immigrants and naturalized American citizens here, we retain our old world ethnic differences. It's the narcissism of the slightest differences, as Freud might say. (2002)"

"I'm amazed at how fast the interest has grown in writing in English by writers of South Asian origin, whether they're living in India, living in South Asia, or they are expatriate writers living here or immigrant American writers like Jhumpa Lahiri and me. The size of the community of such writers and the body of work produced has happened so fast. (2007)"

"Literature can help bring about change of hearts and minds and then put pressure for political, legislative change. (2007)"

"I was born into a class that did not live in its native language. I was born into a city that feared its future, and trained me for emigration."

"I am an American. I am an American writer, in the American mainstream, trying to extend it. This is a vitally important statement for me-I am not an Indian writer, not an exile, not an expatriate. I am an immigrant; my investment is in the American reality, not the Indian. I look on ghettoization-whether as a Bengali in India or as a hyphenated Indo-American in North America as a temptation to be surmounted. It took me ten painful years, from the early seventies to the early eighties, to overthrow the smothering tyranny of nostalgia. The remaining struggle for me is to make the American readership, meaning the editorial and publishing industries as well, acknowledge the same fact. (As the reception of such films as Gandhi and A Passage to India as well as The Far Pavillions and The Jewel in the Crown shows, nostalgia is a two-way street. Americans can feel nostalgic for a world they never knew.)"

"my literary agenda begins by acknowledging that America has transformed me. It does not end until I show how I (and the hundreds of thousands like me) have transformed America. The agenda is simply stated, but in the long run revolutionary. Make the familiar exotic; the exotic familiar."

"The most moving form of praise I receive from readers can be summed up in three words: I never knew. Meaning, I see these people (call them Indians, Filipinos, Koreans, Chinese) around me all the time and I never knew they had an inner life."

"I have been blessed with an enormity of material. I can be Chekhovian and Tolstoyan-with melancholy and philosophical perspectives on the breaking of hearts as well as the fall of civilizations-and I can be a brash and raucous homesteader, Huck Finn and Woman Warrior, on the unclaimed plains of American literature."

"Writers (especially American writers, weaned on the luxury of affluence and freedom) often disavow the notion of a "literary duty" or "political consciousness," citing the all-too-frequent examples of writers ruined by their shrill commitments. Glibness abounds on both sides of the argument, but finally I have to side with my "Third World" compatriots: I do have a duty, beyond telling a good story or drawing a convincing character. My duty is to give voice to continents, but also to redefine the nature of American and what makes an American. In the process, work like mine and dozens like it will open up the canon of American literature."

"my true material is immigration. In other words, transformation not preservation."

"My theme is the making of new Americans"

"She has been called the grande dame of diasporic Indian literature, and her relationships with the others in the group are at times complex. Two men in particular engage her attention. She wrote in 1989, "our collective experience is mirrored in the works of two magnificent writers: V. S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. Either-following Naipaul-we are less than fully human, pathetic trained monkeys, mimic men; or we are miraculous translations, Lamarckian mutations, single lives that have acquired new characteristics and recapitulated the entire cultural history of our genotype." Naipaul was an early model for Mukherjee, but her attitude toward him changed after she and Robert Boyers interviewed him in 1979. She spoke at length to me about the evolution of her relationship with Naipaul and his work. She continues to teach certain of his novels even while rejecting his worldview and politics. Salman Rushdie, on the other hand, is a writer whom she has greatly admired, going so far as to publish an homage to him titled "Prophet and Loss: Salman Rushdie's Migration of Souls" in the Village Voice Literary Supplement in March 1989"

"Bharati Mukherjee once said that every immigrant must feel powerful because he or she can reinvent one's own past. We see this happen all the time it is a unique opportunity to gain some kind of self-confidence or a better self-image. So in a sense, we are reinventing our own vision and reinventing our past."

"Since the advent of Black power, the Black male has exerted a more prominent leadership role in our struggle for justice in this country. He sees the system for what it really is for the most part. But where he rejects its values and mores on many issues, when it comes to women, he seems to take his guidelines from the pages of the Ladies' Home Journal."

"Let me state here and now that the Black woman in America can justly be described as a "slave of a slave.""

"Those who are exerting their "manhood" by telling Black women to step back into a domestic, submissive role are assuming a counter-revolutionary position."

"The new world we are attempting to create must destroy oppression of any type. The value of this new system will be determined by the status of the person who was low man on the totem pole."

"Once you have caught a glimpse of freedom or experienced a bit of self-determination, you can't go back to old routines that were established under a racist, capitalist regime."

"…I looked the word up in the dictionary – I have had little formal instruction, what I know I have learned by reading, travelling, picking the right friends and the right lovers – and I told myself that I have always persevered..."

"…When I was 47 I returned to modelling (Ed: for Revlon as well) and I asked that my photos shouldn’t be retouched. Women stopped me on the street and told me that for a long time they felt ignored and invisible and seeing me in magazines made them feel that they weren’t invisible anymore…"

"I was attracted to money. I was attracted to the idea of doing what I wanted to do, which was not being a little Southern girl like little Southern girls were for the last, you know, 300 years, but to instead see what it was like to go all over the world and what it was like to be with different people in different places and to see what their lives were like..."

"They have a lot of sayings in Charleston (Hutton's hometown), and one of them is, "beauty is as beauty does." And in order to stay alive and make a bunch of money, I had to hopefully do both. But I had to let the beauty thing go. Beauty is as beauty does."

"When I arrived in Los Angeles and began going on auditions, I was never considered for Latina roles. I was "ethnic" but not decidedly Latina looking. If they were hiring a Latina to play a Latina, they wanted her to "look like a Latina" e.g. high cheek bones, dark skin and a mane of black hair. Well, I just couldn't get arrested by casting directors as a Latina. I think this led to the realization that I was going to have to blaze a trail for myself because I didn't fit into one particular "type."…"

"Teaching, good teaching, is a remarkable gift which I highly revere. One of the saddest things that has happened to education, I feel, is the loss of respect and honor once given to educators as professionals…"

"Most trained actors can pick up a scene and give it a good sturdy first read, but a few coaching sessions does not a trained actor make - a lesson which has stayed with me ever since."

"I ultimately left with my family's blessing. I didn't really realize at the time how final that trip was for me. I think Texas is beautiful and there is a part of the Lone Star State that I will always carry with me. I am very proud of being Tex/Mex. The difficult part for me was being a very aware child while growing up in Texas in the '50's and '60's. Racism was prevalent. I felt it and saw it in big ugly ways and I felt it and saw it in subtle, painful injustices that affect me to this day…"

"You get to contribute so significantly in the editing room because you shape the movie and the performances," she says. "You help the director bring all the hard work of those who made the film to fruition. You give their work rhythm and pace and sometimes adjust the structure to make the film work – to make it start to flow up there on the screen. And then it's very rewarding after a year's work to see people react to what you've done in the theater."

"Editing is a lot about patience and discipline and just banging away at something, turning off the machine and going home at night because you're frustrated and depressed, and then coming back in the morning to try again."

"Ah, but they aren't violent until I've edited them."

"I think Marty's use of violence is very valid. He never uses it gratuitously, he always makes a very strong point….if you're going to show violence and it's done with conviction the way Marty does it then it is correct."

"When you're a film-maker you become addicted, your family suffers, your friends suffer, to say nothing of what's going on on the set. It's an incredible way to show the impulse to view. Directors are constantly looking."

"When the fan magazines started wanting to take pictures of me making sandwiches for my husband, I said no. You know there are tribes in Africa who believe that a camera steals a little part of your soul, and in a way I think that's true about living your private life in public. It takes something away from your relationships, it cheapens them."

"It wasn't difficult to retire. I have friends who have a family life and do their art and make it work. I realized I couldn't give myself to both, and I really wanted to make a life with my husband, so that's what I did."

"a lot of actors, we create a backstory of our own in our heads and we often relate it to our intimates in the film, say my husband. But it just depends on how actors want to work."

"The fact is, as actors, everything we do, bad or good, is a contribution. To me, it is a positive thing to give people as wide a range of human behavior with some sense of understanding of that behavior or some clue to it. It may be a very small thing in terms of the problems that exist in the world, but it is a thing, and it's something I can do, and like to do—am thrilled to do actually."

"God was right behind me, making me strong to build my character, to be good and not bad. I prayed never to hurt people like that. The other thing I did was to visualize myself happy in the future, and that gave me strength. God does not give you glory and goodness all your life; you have to grow and learn."

"There's a lot that we keep inside that's starts very early for most us, if you look at kids, kids are for the most part very expressive, they yell, they scream, they cry, they say whatever they feel, they like to play, they like to pretend, they get mad, they cry easily, and it's not about being about that again, but it's that kind of freedom, that kind of spontaneity that often we loose early on because we're shut down by experiences that hurt, by people who can't stand that kind of intensity that children have and try to get them to shut up and behave."

"I like to think of smiling as a cause not an effect. Smile all the time."

"Brethren, this is the time anybody will need grace more than ever before. ‎"

"Don’t marry a girl who is lazy! Don’t marry a girl who cannot cook, she needs to know how to do chores and cook because you cannot afford to be eating out all the time"

"Go to your pastor first to consult for marriage before your parents"

"There is real danger in losing call of God"

"Diners seek in each bite, the flavor that takes them back to their childhood and the dishes that, with the passage of time, they stopped consuming."

"The inner life has no boundaries"

"We are infants compared to the universe"

"Intelligence and feelings forming alliances for seeing."

"How I love to listen./Remind myself there is more to the world./How I have learned to grow from it."

"Take off the mask. Discard it."

"See for yourself/the you inside no one else can see."

"Climb the stairway of your imagination"

"I want to know/who will decide our fate?/You, or I, or WE together?/Will I be free to discover my own path?"

"Poems are for the livin', that's what I know."

"within these verses is history"

"Discovering new meanings for old words/listed in the encyclopedia of colonialism."

"forming bridges of correspondence from old to new worlds."

"I seek poems that rise from the ashes"

"suspended from the high branches of an old wisdom tree"

"born/from the holy tree where one is brother/to all brothers, sister/to all sisters."

"Bureaucrats shifting responsibility,/shuffling lives into despair"

"My father's family is Puerto Rican, my mother's family is Dominican. I start with Puerto Rican-Dominican, then I go to Borinqueña-Quisqueyana, because Borinqueña means I am a native of Borinquen, the Taino name for Puerto Rico, and Quisqueyana means I am a native of Quisqueya, the Taino name for the Dominican Republic. The Tainos were the indigenous people who inhabited the islands of the Caribbean before Columbus arrived and renamed their land. So if someone calls you Borinqueño, Boricua, or Quisqueyana, they're saying that you're someone who identifies with your past and your culture. It's also a reference to nationhood. I'm making connections to my history by tagging that on. The Africana identifies another part of my roots. I'm saying that I'm American, born in the Bronx, but I'm also Taino and African."

"I disagree with the statements that all Tainos were wiped out because many fled and hid in the mountains; they mixed and married, so the Taino is still very present in our society. Recent DNA testing has proved this to be true in spite of what the history books tell us. You know, you can't always believe those accounts written in books. It depends on who is writing it and why, what is the point they are getting at to try and convince whoever may be the reader."

"I'm still a painter. I consider myself a painter who uses poetry as a different way of painting. It wasn't until I was in college that I started experimenting with words and language."

"When I was young, I was placed in a boarding school where I was not allowed to speak my natural Spanish, which was all I spoke until I was five. Not being allowed to speak Spanish in school traumatized me with inhibitions about speaking."

"In boarding school, in the second grade I made the decision that I was going to be an artist because I wouldn't have to talk. I could express myself with colors, and it was safe...So I basically became a listener, an observer. My mother thought that something was wrong with me. I became an extreme introvert who wouldn't talk. You wouldn't believe that about me today because I'm very different, but back then I had a lot of fears about language. It wasn't until that art class that I opened up to words. I started experimenting and incorporating words into some of my drawings."

"(At National Black Theater performance) I was in awe of the words I witnessed that day. It was the first time that I heard the works of writers like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Amiri Baraka. I heard poetry that was about me, that was very immediate. I connected to it in a visceral way. That experience moved me so profoundly that I went home and that night I wrote my first batch of poems. It was like the floodgates opened. That reading empowered me with a voice and gave me permission to express everything that had been festering in me for years. So I just started experimenting with language and writing all kinds of things."

"I write visually. I'm a painter who uses words."

"When students write, they often generalize. I want them to be specific, so I ask them to imagine that they're creating a movie, that they're using a camera, and that they have to describe each shot for the listening audience. So I stress detail to overcome the hurdle of generalizing."

"When I started writing, there were only two women writers that I knew: Lorraine Sutton and Margie Simmons. There were very few Latinas writing in English... So when I started, I was mainly surrounded by men-Pedro Pietri, Jesus Papoleto Melendez, Lucky Cienfuegos, Miguel Algarín, Miguel Piñero, Tato Laviera. Many of them had books already published. I was like a sponge, absorbing different things from these male contemporaries."

"I feel live I'm constantly evolving into my own voice."

"We know the projections about Latinos becoming the largest minority within the next few years, but you can go to Barnes and Noble across the street, where they have a department store of books, or any other franchise bookstore anywhere in the States, and you won't even find one aisle devoted to Latino literature. So what are they trying to tell us-that we don't have a literature? Or that we don't read or write or buy books? None of this is true. We are a community with a vibrant and extensive literature, but we are still a marginalized culture, even now in this new millennium."

"There is the argument that anyone's writing is meant to be shared with the universe. I want to die knowing that my children are going to have some kind of legacy because this is all I have to give-my work."

"I'm still angry, but I'm angry in a different way. I've released a lot of it. I'm still frustrated about a lot of things about the marginalization that happens to us. It keeps showing its face."

"We have only to look at the devastation reaped upon Vieques to understand why we have to demand our autonomy."

"My position is that people should be able to determine for themselves. I believe in the right of choice and self-determination. I also believe that people should not be exploited unless they agree to it. And who does?"

"When I was in Cuba, I saw some things that really impressed me. When we arrived, on the way to the hotel we were driving through the streets late at night. I expressed concern when I saw a woman walking alone. Our chaperone told us that they don't have the same issues of sexual exploitation and rape like in the United States. And then I also saw that they had twenty-four-hour day care. That made sense. I saw free hospitalization and free education"

"I'm definitely English dominant. I've learned to think and feel in English, although on occasions Spanish comes back."

"Sometimes, within the African American community, being Latina can be a liability rather than an asset. But then, that's why it's important to know our history, to know how we are connected, how we are victims of the diaspora that divided our families and plunged us into ideas of segregation and disunity. It's so important to know our history to overcome the misconceptions about race and culture."

"I didn't know anything about my Puerto Rican or Dominican culture until I was in my late twenties. This information was not taught or available in the schools. And it's still pretty much the case. I go into the schools today, and one of the first lessons I do with the children is to talk about the Taino Indians. You would think with all the information available today, that students would know something. But the kids are amazed when they hear me talk about this. I ask them if they know the meaning of Borinqueña or Quisqueyana. Even in Washington Heights, in a school that is predominantly Dominican, they don't know where Quisqueya comes from, even though they've heard it a thousand times. They don't know that it's a Taino word. They don't know that it was the Indian name of their island. So this information is still missing, yet still terribly important."

"I want to learn about my past, my culture. She (her mother) talks to me in broken English, reminding me how wonderful it is to be an American; I talk to her in broken Spanish, attempting to explain why I want to know more about our history and culture."

"Now you have Latino studies departments in some of the universities. And even though some of these are still highly marginalized and no more than token gestures of integration, inclusion, and diversification, where you get only one or two classes, there's still a demand for it. People want this information. This is a multicultural society. People are tired and bored with exclusivity."

"I think there are many people out there who are ready and want to embrace a multicultural ideology."

"how we are marginalized, how whole communities are sedated with the new slavery of drugs, how we are easily offered various forms of addiction to cope with our situations, anything from drugs, alcohol, religion, sex, television, food, money-take your pick. A poet named Safiya said, "We all are addicted to something." But we still manage to dream in spite of it."

"The poet is a truth bearer of reality and image. We live in a society of denial that doesn't want to see or hear these truth tales, so consequently poets are shunned to a great degree because people don't always want to hear the truth."

"In the old days poets used to go into the factories and the sugar and tobacco plantations and recite to the workers while they were doing their thing. No more. Perhaps it's a fear of intelligence, of language. A fear of self-realization."

"I was raised by my mother, but around my father's family. She was alone. My father's family rejected my mother because she was too dark, and they were only a slight shade lighter. Their attitude was based on racist criteria of appearances that people had back then, when the hue of your skin defined who you were, where you were able to go, what you I could learn, do, and achieve in life."

"Music has been a very important part of my life."

"while one might see a struggle for linguistic identity through Esteves' use of Spanish and English or for a way to connect to Puerto Rico through her reference to Puerto Rican independence fighter Lolita Lebrón, I cannot disconnect these themes from her self-definition as "Taíno Africana," where her claim to indigeneity is embedded in her recognition of her blackness. Her struggle for language, like Tato Laviera's, is not just linguistic, cultural or national, but also racial. When Esteves cannot find her voice, "Pero con what voice do my lips move?/ Rhythms of rosa wood feet dancing bomba/ Not even here. But here. Y conga," she turns to African rhythms present in Puerto Rican music. The "we" then that "defy translation" and are "Nameless," then are not just Nuyoricans. They are Afro-Latin@s."

"Melissa Castillo-Garsow, ¡Manteca!: An Anthology of Afro-Latin@ Poets"

"One of the ways in which all universities could contribute substantially to their home societies is by helping students obtain a better understanding of the development and interdependencies over time of our seemingly fragmented globe."

"Dramatic in their scope though the maritime empires once were, it is overland empires that have proved more resilient, and variations of them are still with us. The United States, Russia, China and India call themselves nation-states, but all of them are in reality products of, and marked by, different imperial enterprises; and their respective rulers on occasion still behave accordingly. Think of Donald Trump’s casual suggestion last August that the US purchase Greenland. At the time, many put this down to Trump being Trump. In fact, he was acting in conformity with many of his predecessors. US presidents proposed purchasing Greenland in the 1860s and 1940s, and American politicians did succeed in buying other vast tracts of land, Alaska, for instance, and the huge Louisiana Purchase in 1803."

"The men who dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 were deploying technology that had taken decades to develop. Nonetheless, in carrying out that act, these US airmen did effect an almost immediate transformation in the nature of warfare and in attitudes towards it."

"Consider the terrible outbreak of plague in the 14th century known as the Black Death. Europe suffered disproportionately, losing perhaps 50 per cent of its total population. One result of this, however, was that the living standards and wages of many of those who survived seem to have improved. This, it has been suggested, led in time to a marked increase in Europeans’ food consumption and demand for consumer goods. And this rise in demand may well in turn have contributed to the increasing number of European trading voyages across the world’s oceans in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries."

"Given the current bitter polarisation of political allegiances, it is important to remember that national groupings have never been homogeneous and are rarely static. Of course, there are some persistent habits and patterns of thought and behaviour in all long-standing states. But countries and their populations are not just mixed in terms of ethnicity, politics, religion and much more, they also change over time, sometimes rapidly and radically."

"Perhaps the most recurring and paradoxical trigger of change in human society has been war."

"The second amendment, passed in 1791, allowing US citizens access to arms, was manageable when most firearms were muskets that took minutes to load."

"With an incredible knack for identifying and nurturing artistic talent, Helen regularly imparted her invaluable visual arts skills to many artists, assisting them to blossom into top-notch creatives. With the death of Helen, Zimbabwe has lost an exceptionally talented practitioner and arts administrator who contributed to the growth and development of the visual arts by putting the sector on the world’s artistic map. May her soul Rest In Peace."

"“Let’s work on newspaper, with mud.”"

"“I was brought up in the British colonial type of painting, which I deplored. I had to do the little butterflies, the little flowers, and the little this and the little that in watercolors.”"

""As I began to re-identify myself with the African environment, so my painting became broader and my color stronger, symbolic of the felt experience,”"

"“fight between who and what I am.”"

"'Reading a map' in the Middle Ages could mean scanning great blocks of written matter, describing geographical, anthropological, and historical features. The Hereford map asks for the prayers of all those who 'see, read, hear or possess' it."

"Behind the maps of the sixteenth century lies another story—the change in geographical conceptions, mapmaking, and map usage that took place in the late Middle Ages. Pietro Vesconte, Cresques Abraham, Fra Mauro, Andrea Bianco, and Henricus Martellus Germanus were among the medieval cartographers who began to reshape the image of the world before Columbus sailed west."

"Looking at a medieval mappamundi (or world map) is a disorienting experience. Oriented to the east, displaying unfamiliar geographical forms and blanketed with images of strange animals and monstrous humans, it does not correspond to our modern concept of a world map."

"According to The Inquisitr News report, in the video posted by LiveLeak, Saud Saleh said that the rape is allowed during times of “legitimate war” between Muslims and their enemies. “The female prisoners of wars are ‘those whom you own.’ In order to humiliate them, they become the property of the army commander, or of a Muslim, and he can have sex with them just like he has sex with his wives,” Saleh was quoted as saying. (ALSO READ: Muslim leader Abdul Raheem Quraishi is dead)"

"While speaking on purchase of slaves from Asian countries for sexual purposes, Saleh said that Allah allows Muslim men to have sexual relations with slave women and that is ‘legitimate’. Saleh suggested that the only time it is acceptable for Muslim men to enslave a woman for sexual purposes is during a ‘legitimate war’ between Muslims and their enemies such as that with Israel. Also Read - Bihar Gangrape and Murder: Bereaved Kin of Minor Victim Seeks Death for Accused, Police Say, 'Up to Court to Decide'"

"Saleh further said that enslaving and raping Israeli women is ‘acceptable’ and ‘encouraged’ in Islam. She also condemned Muslim men who are using East Asian women for sexual relationships. She said that only legitimately-owned slaves come from prisoners of war. After Saleh’s interview went viral on social media, Muslim community denounced the claims made by the professor and said that she is propagating a wrong image of Islam."

"Women should be allowed to play their role, their role is to help the men to rebuild the society in any form or shape."

"That is why I said other countries have found that women are agents for development."

"If you overlook the women and their contributions, you are going nowhere, it seems as if you have two legs and you are running with just one; you won’t go anywhere."

"One leg is the male, the other leg is the female but in our society, it seems as if it is only one leg we are running with, that’s why we are where we are now."

"Any nation that realizes that women constitutes the other leg, you will see the impact, the country will grow and develop, it is my area sociology of education and gender studies; It has been proven that without women contributing, if you still believe in patriarchy, you are going nowhere."

"The patriarchy is still in men; it’s like some men are afraid of allowing women to come up; they feel a woman should not be competing with a man, I feel advocacy is needed, that please, men, we are not coming to compete, there is no way a woman can be a man, I have my role to play, due to biological parts, a man has his own role to play, but if it comes to development of the society, both of them should work together."

"There is need for advocacy which we can do through our traditional rulers, people need to come together to advance this course; to assist the women to play their role, everybody was born with a potential, God created all of us equal."

"I have never heard any research that say the brain of a man is bigger or smarter than that of a woman, it is the society that made the woman not to develop her potentials. Men hold grip of positions and they believe it is the best for the society"

"When I had my first degree, he wrote Mrs Uche Azikiwe B.Edu, to show you how he valued it. When I got master’s degree, he would write B. English (Education), M. Education (Curriculum) on the envelop. He did the same thing when I had my PhD. When I was able to achieve all that, he was so happy because he had asked if I would be able to combine everything. I am happy he was alive when I got my PhD in 1992."

"Personally, all I want is the best for Nigeria. Anyone who will stop insecurity, poverty and all sorts of indices that often make people avoid Nigeria, I am totally in support of the person."

"That is why I will stand on behalf of Azikiwe to pray that whatever happens, Nigeria will never disintegrate. Please let us come together. It will make him happy and make some of his other contemporaries happy that Nigeria is one. Please, let our current leaders do something to make sure that Nigeria is one. One Nigeria is what we need."

"Why Nigeria is crawling."

"The country was standing on one leg and would hardly make any movement under such condition."

"It was regrettable that the men were still hiding under culture and traditions to relegate women to the background."

"Fortunately for me, I came into his life when he had made everything one would need in his life as a human being and a man. In 1973 when we got married, he was already everything; he had run his newspapers, been a Premier, Senate President, President and all that. I wouldn’t say I contributed anything at all because he had already achieved all that before I came into his life. So I will not claim that; the only thing I will claim is that I gave him comfort when he was at the age of 60, 70 and when he was old and in the latter part of his life. That was my contribution to his life. He was already successful when I came into his life."

"I met him through his scholarship scheme. I danced in my hometown – Afikpo – during the electioneering campaigns of the National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons in the 60s; there were four of us. We were there to receive politicians coming to Afikpo for campaign, so we danced. In the end, he gave me a scholarship to go to secondary school and other things. My elder sister, who was the leader of the group, was given a job in Lagos. I don’t know what was done for the other two because there were four us. It was before the war, so the war disrupted my education as it did to everybody in the East."

"After the war, he resumed the scholarship scheme for all of us because there were many of us that were beneficiaries. After the war, I completed my secondary school education, but no longer at Nsukka but at Holy Child Secondary School, Abakaliki. It was after my West African Senior School Certificate Examination in 1971 that he asked what I would want to do and I said I wanted to be a nurse. He said, okay, I will send you to London to be trained as a nurse; that was where I sent my sisters in the 50s. My niece was also going for the same training. He said, I’ll send both of you; that was when he came back after the war. So it was while I was preparing to travel to London for nursing that the story changed and we got married."

"My father was a Sergeant-Major in Nigeria Police and I think around that time, the rank was the highest position for Nigerians except if you had gone to secondary school. My father did not complete his primary school education, so when he joined the police force, the highest position he could be promoted to was Sergeant-Major. I grew up in the barracks and to know my father as a big man being the Sergeant-Major in charge of the whole barracks. Nobody dared come near our house. Other families were living in one room each in the barracks but we had a complex like when we were at the police barracks along Ogui Road, Enugu."

"I got home and told my husband that I wanted to go back to school. He said fine but that I should bear in mind that I was his mother, the mother of our two children and in charge of the home. He asked if I would be able to cope and I said yes. Then he said go ahead. That was when universities were organising examinations separately as there was no Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board. So I bought application form, did the examination but I was not offered admission."

"My friends were shocked; they said, why can’t your husband talk to the university’s vice-chancellor so that you could get admitted. I said I would not do that and he would not do that either because I knew him very well. So he (my husband) asked me about the result and I said it was out but I wasn’t taken. He said okay. Then in 1976, I sat again. I think what affected me the first time was that they said for me to read geography, I must have one science subject. I was not good at sciences and mathematics. I failed mathematics in WASSCE because I didn’t like the subject. So, in 1976, I changed to English (Education) instead of the geography that I had initially chosen because I did very well in geography in WASSCE. So the first time, the reason was that I didn’t have mathematics. So the following year, I got admitted to read English (Education)."

"After my National Youth Service Corps programme, I became hungry for more education. I had a master’s degree in curriculum education, development and planning. It was around that time in the 80s that gender issues came up, so I got interested in gender issues. I wanted to do my PhD in something related to gender issues and they said no, because my master’s degree was in curriculum education, development and planning. They said I must do something on gender issues before doing PhD in the same field. So I went to get a second master’s degree, this time in sociology of education and gender issues and my PhD in the same field. I will tell you how my husband appreciated my going to school. Every Christmas, he would give me a card and on February 4, my birthday too, he would give me a card and a letter."

"When I got married in 1973 and came to Nsukka with my husband, one day I came across one of my classmates in secondary school. Her name was Sharon and I asked what she was studying. The next day, I met another person and another one after that. We were all in the same class at Abakaliki. I saw them at the time I had my second child, Uwakwe, and it just occurred to me that I had to do something. These were my classmates and they weren’t brighter than me in secondary school."

"I had it very easy because I was not brought up to be proud. I hope I am not blowing my trumpet but I think I am very humble. Nobody will say that I crossed their path but if you cross mine or take me for granted, I won’t take it lightly, I would bring out police barracks life. Growing up in police barracks will make you tough."

"I think he knew my father in Lagos. The story I heard was that when my father was in Lagos, he had something to do in the Government House, Marina, where the President lived. I think my father also worked there, maybe to help secure Marina or whatever. I don’t think my father had any problem with who his children chose to marry; although, he was very strict. When we were young, we couldn’t just go out to play; it had to be done based on his rules."

"Frankly speaking, as my benefactor, who was paying my school fees, I saw him as my father. He was like a father all through the time I was having my education; the only time I saw him was when I went to tender my report (card) or collect my school fees if he didn’t pay through the reverend sisters. When the issue of getting married came up after the war, I was already 26 years old."

"Let me emphasise on that because people always say Zik married a 16-year-old girl. I wasn’t 16 when I got married to Zik, I was 26 years old in 1973; that was when I got married to him. When I was going to school, there was nothing like marriage on the agenda; that was from 1965 to 1972, and I wasn’t the only person that he offered scholarship. There were many boys and girls that were sponsored by Zik. So the issue of marriage came late 1972 after I had finished from secondary school. I was born in 1947 and got married in 1973. 26 years."

"He didn’t spoil me or anything; he didn’t have the money because he was giving scholarships to many people. Many people enjoyed his scholarships through to the end except you dropped out of school, got married or did not continue. I can’t say I had no knowledge of the Zik of Africa, no, but to say that that was what attracted me to him, I just don’t know. I know people from everywhere, including Yorubaland, enjoyed his scholarships."

"From 1973, there was no relationship with Chief Awolowo, but my contact with the Balewas was through the office handling the affairs of former heads of state. I think it was the late Chief Mrs Stella Obasanjo that invited former First Ladies to Abuja; that was the first time I met one of Tafawa Balewa’s wives. I think it was the surviving one then. The relationship is cordial. I wasn’t on the scene during the political era, so I don’t know what happened then but the meetings we have had recently have been cordial."

"From what I know or what I read or what I have been reading, even recently on some of the platforms, the killing of the Igbo people was not acceptable to anybody. It was unacceptable to Zik the way Igbo people were killed in the North. When Ojukwu declared Eastern Region as separate nation, we all know that Zik supported him because he felt that he could not live and see our people – Ndigbo – being slaughtered for no just cause but as time went on, it didn’t work out. I even read on one of the platforms that an extract from a book written by the late Gen. Philip Efiong, who was second in command to Ojukwu, stated everything and why it seemed that people like Zik decided to leave Ojukwu."

"It is like when you think you know all and don’t consult those who will help, but consult those who will tell you what you want to hear; that was the problem of Ojukwu, according to Efiong in the book. I think that was when it went to the level that Zik now left and went on exile in London. He got all the recognitions for Biafra – he was responsible for four recognitions that Biafra got during the war; it was because of him. And consider the fact that Zik was in the same age bracket with Ojukwu’s father, so they were close friends. He was older than Ojukwu, so the fact that someone wanted to work with you shouldn’t mean that you would disrespect anyone. So I think the story has it that when he told somebody like Nnamdi Azikiwe to do something, then you would go behind and not accept the suggestions he was giving to you, how would that person continue? That was why he said since my contribution is not appreciated, there is no need staying, so he left."

"We used to eat every meal together except when one of us was not at home. It’s something that bonds the family together. After eating, we would relax and chat. We argued and disagreed to agree. I had fun arguing with him even though I might not be correct and he would always caution me. He would say you have to be diplomatic, you are not diplomatic and I would say, why should I be diplomatic when I know that this is what it is. He would say, no, there is a way you have to put it, so it doesn’t just come out like that. You know these are fond memories and as I told you he was very protective of his family, but to me, it was a sign of love and care. He wouldn’t want anything to happen to any member of his family. That was why if you went out and didn’t return by 6pm, he would start worrying. I am happy that he is resting in peace because he did a good job for Nigeria and Africa."

"I have an NGO, Widows’ Lifeline, that I want to focus my attention fully on now that I have retired. It is an NGO that takes care of widows and provides opportunities for skills acquisition for them. And after graduation, we give them start-up grants so that they take off and become economically and financially independent to some extent, considering the problems that our widows go through, especially in this part of the country. But the problem I have is that the number of widows swells or increases every year and it is not easy to accommodate everybody. I have to cut down on the number to at least 40 – 50 every year, which is not very easy for a retiree like me to be sponsoring."

"We women leaders must rise up to the task of reshaping our country by providing our intuitive ideas to support the developmental ideals of Nigeria."

"We must endeavour to raise good children and of course inspire them to do the same to their children. Through this, we shall raise a generation of conscientious leaders who will have the fear of God in them to do all the needful to develop our dear Nation."

"..….let me point out that nothing can be achieved without the following: a clear vision, burning desire, an unquenchable passion and corresponding actions."

"When I started, so many people did not understand and asked questions like how can human beings be trafficked? Many people were taken aback and not until when the real thing started. The moment I started it, the Italian government were very impressed and they started repatriating our girls back to Nigeria. The first batch of girls that were repatriated were 70 and were accompanied by 140 Policemen because these children were very reluctant, they enjoyed the life out there and didn’t want to go back home and it was something else and since then we brought it to the front burner of the government and work started and that is how WOTCLEF came about."

""WOTCLEF is my fervent prayer, dream and aspiration to restore human dignity"."

""In WOTCLEF, we have strategies we use to accomplish our mission, through sensitization, we create awareness, and we assist the trafficked victims and the vulnerable persons, and we rehabilitate and we re-integrate them into the society and even with their parents or guardians, we bring them together all to re-integrate them back into society. Apart from advocacy, we do capacity building for these children, we partner with stakeholders, both national and international agencies and the work is very easy for us. Through this WOTCLEF has earned accolades in the United Nations (UN). We have a seat at the UN and if they are having any discussions or forum on women trafficking or child labour, we are invited to come and have a say in whatever they are doing"."

""So amazed, I asked if this is what these people do to these children so it hurt my feelings and I said to my God given self that one day, when I am in position, I will help these young vulnerable children"."

"I am not scared to death facing it. It will certainly give me a card to play with at the poker game of Hollywood. That can't hurt at all."

"It may have to do with my ego, wanting to be famous, wanting to be adored, wanting to be loved. ... Maybe I associated some sort of romance with the theater."

"You have to keep pressing through despair."

"All the great roles are tough-cookie roles, They’re the women you meet and can’t forget. They’ve got stuff! They’re generally women who have met and not allowed themselves to be overcome by challenges."

"When you’re suddenly in the limelight, you can make a few mistakes. Success has a way of distorting people: distorting your expectations, distorting your personality, distorting your sense of your own value. It takes a very strong sense of character to not let that happen or to notice that it’s happening."

"I’m not sure I started out as a great mother. I think I learned how to be a good mother."

"Obviously it’s very different because this is the great cathedral of nature, but it’s calming to my spirit and restful and refocuses you on what is beautiful and important."

"And if you can stay open through a long run and not get too rigidly identified with how you're doing certain lines, the process of discovering goes on through the length of the performance of the piece."

"I don’t like to go over territory that I’ve explored before. And I’d never played a peasant woman."

"I do occasionally read for things, and I have to say that I feel like every other young actor who is nervous before an audition. Even now, I still hate auditioning. I never liked auditioning."

"It’s hard to get a job after that, People think you want more money."

"It’s from people seeing you even in classes and talking about you that eventually your name and what you do gets known, if you care passionately enough about the art of acting."

"She's very open, very diligent and very gifted, she cared about the work of others, not just her own. It is not the usual ugly greed you find in some actresses today."

"She told my son the story of 'Big' in a wonderful way, Then she told my husband and me that she was going to give it one more year and then quit. 'Big' saved her from that."

"We leave it up to readers to form their own opinion."

"I swear to fully and faithfully discharge my duties and to exercise my office without fear or favour in accordance with the Constitution and laws in force, to ensure the confidentiality of proceedings and votes, to abstain from taking public positions and to decline any consultation on matters falling under the purview of Elections Cameroon."

"Treat all students and staff fairly, including foes."

"My husband had told me: ‘never ask me anything about national business."

"My husband said he could not allow all the Rwandan refugees to repatriate at once with all their cows and everything."

"I’m not a consciously political person, I suppose, except in a psychological sense, in an emotional sense. I understand very little of politics in terms of governments and foreign policy and so my response to them, and to the play, was intuitive and not intellectual."

"Power is one thing if you have a very rigid sense of morality backing it up. It’s very hard to put the source of one’s power into that role, it’s like choosing to put the positive piece of yourself into something you feel is not right."

"I do like it. I get a kick out of it!"

"They tease me about the Oscar, about having won the Oscar. But sweetly!"

"I can't be a man. But I can embrace the head of a man, the intelligence of a man, the spirit of a man."

"Everybody either wanted to take care of me or push me around, you know? I was teased a lot, sure I was, of course. Fourth grade, fifth grade, sixth grade, everybody was taking their spurts except me. I was not growing up."

"When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts."

"I was so lucky my parents were encouraging on every level."

"I think people have always liked in me the combination of being the underdog because I’m a tiny woman, but I have enormous authority in myself."

"It was bigger than life. In some sense, I longed to be bigger than life, because I wasn’t."

"Though I had hoped to return to playing Hetty at the start of the season, I had to take some additional time to recover. I look forward to returning later this season."

"We’re doing everything we can to keep everyone safe, and Linda, you know, is a little extra-special in terms of how we have to look out for her."

"I love writing picture books. When I get the germ of a new idea, I feel a little shiver of anticipation or recognition. I don’t do anything immediately about the idea. I just keep it there at the back of my mind and think about it now and again and let it ‘brew’, sometimes jotting down bits of the story. Once I’ve got the whole story in my head – I especially need to know how it starts and ends – I sit down at my computer and write the first draft. Then I keep rewriting – draft after draft – until I feel it’s as good as I can make it, which is often not nearly good enough."

"Really, just do it. Many people I speak to say they want to write or illustrate, but they actually haven’t completed anything. Write it, send it off to a publisher and while you’re waiting for a response, get on with the next story. Be determined and resilient, accept rejection and criticism. The publisher and editor are there to help you make the best book possible."

"I read somewhere that all this -the people, the animals, the mountains, the rivers -is just God dreaming. I wish he'd wake the fuck up."

"India presents to the visitor an overwhelmingly visual impression. It is beautiful, colorful, and sensuous. It is captivating and intriguing, repugnant and puzzling. It combines the intimacy and familiarity of English four o'clock tea with the dazzling foreignness of carpisoned elephants or vast crowds bathing in the Ganga during an eclipse. India's displays of multi-armed images, its processions and its pilgrimages, its beggars and Its kings, its street life and markets, its diversity of people - all appear to the eye in a kaleidoscope of images. Whatever Hindus affirm of the meaning of life, death, and suffering, they affirm with their eyes wide open."

"It was an awesome city - captivating, challenging, and endlessly fascinating - Banaras raised some of the questions about the Hindu tradition which have interested me ever since - its complex mythological imagination, its prodigious display of divine images, its elaborate ritual traditions, and its understanding of the relation of life and death. It was Banaras that turned me to the study of India and the Hindu religious tradition.""

"How to create works of art when nothing connects people to the world? If the artist remains fixed from himself to himself, without any distance in which a relationship to the world and to the other can be inscribed, his work will remain sterile as in the Greek myth of Hesiod's genesis, and is in no way different from any other object."

"The beauty in a work of art is not in the prettiness of what is represented, but emanates from the work as a whole, it is its substrate and it derives from nature."

"Art is about man's belonging to the world and it is through art that man, through aesthetic emotion, experiences awareness of his existence. The artist grasps the world, and the world that appears to us in fractions he restores to us in unity."

"I'm always scared when I think that man who is a being endowed with abilities of reflection, is not capable of solving their personal or collective disputes without violence."

"Wander into any pub in the city and strike up a conversation. Offer to buy your companion a drink, order a Guinness and take it from there."

"At one point in my life, I had to make a decision...I had to decide whether to have too little or too much in my life...Study, children, friends, travel—all of it. That was an easy one. I chose too much.”"

"Satan is a way of perceiving opponents. You may not believe the mythology of such a universe, but it’s in you, a background perception.”"

"There are certain ecological structures in any marriage—some with a traditional gender bias and some not. Simply, people take on certain roles. In a way, I had to do everything. But, most of all, I also wanted to take on the challenge of not giving up, of not despairing. Because Heinz was on the side of life. He loved life. He was full of explorative excitement, interest, passion. I realized that it would be no honor to him to say, ‘I can’t take this, I can’t go on, it’s too hard.’ Somehow, I wanted to take on something of what I’d learned from him, the way he embraced life, with all its dangers and difficulties. I was challenged to do that. I can’t say I’ve done it, but that’s what I wanted to do."

"Yet the gnostic Gospel of Thomas relates that as soon as Thomas recognizes him, Jesus says to Thomas that they have both received their being from the same source . . . Does not such teaching—the identity of the divine and human, the concern with illusion and enlightenment, the founder who is presented not as Lord, but as spiritual guide—sound more Eastern than Western? Some scholars have suggested that if the names were changed, the 'living Buddha' appropriately could say what the Gospel of Thomas attributes to the living Jesus. Could Hindu or Buddhist tradition have influenced gnosticism?"

"Could the title of the Gospel of Thomas—named after the disciple who, tradition tells us, went to India—suggest the influence of Indian tradition?"

"...she is enormously strong. Pagels not only survived two tragedies in the space of fifteen months but since then has written another book, reared her children, taught her many students. She is, by all reports, a good colleague, a devoted friend. Her mind is quick and generous. At fifty-two, she has a mild, earnest appearance (a rounded, friendly face, windblown blond hair), and yet in conversation she is absolutely fierce, focussed, picking apart the careless question, delighted by the unexpected one. When she delivers her lectures for an undergraduate course on the New Testament—Monday and Wednesday mornings at ten—she does not so much pace the room as prowl it. Pagels radiates so much intensity that you somehow imagine a fast-burning cigarette in her hand. There is none. She does not smoke. She smolders."

"It is obvious that the Unionist Party is quite prepared to set Catholic against Protestant in this country rather than give the reforms which would in fact mean there would be an end to sectarianism."

"It's not that women get written out of history - they never get written in"

"Justice has been wounded in the past week."

"[...] the Chief Justice who should know the law, threw away any sense of integrity and decency and went for the land-grab. It is a travesty that this same person, the Chief Justice, is the one who is appointing judges to sit on cases to decide on whether the land-grab is lawful or not."

"How to do research properly: Take community into confidence and share your result properly."

"What I mean is that when people recommend you, you must be qualified."

"Chemistry is a science that is applicable to many fields of life because it is analytical. I had always wanted to do research. When I was in Queen’s School, there was a day I went to the lab after school hours and was mixing chemicals, I almost blew up the lab. I put water into acid instead of the other way round. I was disciplined by my principal the next day. I have always had penchant for wanting to find out things."

"Be aware, know your genotype as a youth, be educated about it and make informed decision later in life. That way, the frequency of SCD will gradually decrease and the burden of it will be reduced in Nigeria."

"When God gives you a vision and you do it, with His help you will succeed. When I have challenges, I go to God and He helps me out. As a woman you can achieve a lot by being nice to people. Be charismatic. Always leave your problem at home. Pray and ask God to help you, He is always there to help."

"God gave me the ability to transform peoples’ lives by talking to them. When I talk to people, they understand the purpose of God in their lives. So, I decided to create awareness to people with sickle cell disorder and give them hope."

"When I retired in 2010, from the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, I took up the challenge of looking after sickle cell patients in my own way with the assistance of professionals. I retired without blemish. Even now, I still have a vibrant laboratory at the College of Medicine where I still do my research work. I still get grants to do research."

"I almost blew up the laboratory in secondary school."

"I was born many years ago to the family of Chief Ologbenla of Efon Alaye. I went to Queen School, Ede, Osun State and University of Ibadan (UI), where I studied Chemistry. After leaving UI, I got married to my heartthrob, Abiodun Falusi, now a professor. We are happily married. We lived in the United State of America for the first five years of our marriage, so we got used to each other before returning to Nigeria. He is a professor of Agricultural Economics, while I moved from Chemistry to Haematology (blood study) at the College of Medicine, University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan. From there, I got my M.Phil in 1981 and my PhD in 1986. I was able to find a novel information about Thalassaemia incidence in Nigeria. It was a first and novel finding. The Lord blessed the work and since then, the genetic world has expanded, the scope of my work has expanded."

"Before I became a professor, I had visited many countries doing research of Genetics of Sickle Cell Disease. I became a director in UCH and was able to lead the ethics in the University of Ibadan. Under my leadership, the first well-organised and functional Institutional Ethics Committee in Nigeria was established in the University of Ibadan. So, we made the first publication to set up a proper establishment that was acceptable worldwide for institutional, operational aspect of medicine on ethics or research."

"I got many awards along the way, notable among them was L’OREAL UNESCO Outstanding Woman of Science in 2001. The award took place in Paris and it was one woman per continent. There I was told to raise champions and bring more women up. That has been my passion and that is what I have been working on. When I retired in 2010, from the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, I took up the challenge of looking after sickle cell patients in my own way with the assistance of professionals. I retired without blemish. Even now, I still have a vibrant laboratory at the College of Medicine where I still do my research work. I still get grants to do research."

"When I came back and was asked to teach, I said no, I wanted to do research. So, I was home until I got a job in UCH, based on my qualification I was to be a junior research fellow but I opted to be a technician so I could be closing at five because of my children. So, I could take care of them. My professor, however, gave me the job and salary of a junior research fellow. Later, I went to UI and registered for part time Masters degree. That was how I moved to academics from technical line."

"However, my Chemistry knowledge brought a difference to Haematology because my work was different from everyone else’s it was analytical. I was finding out a lot about research of blood disorders. Till today, I am still challenged by research ideas in my head. My chemistry background has helped me a lot. It stands me out from the medical people."

"I paid a lot of prices. My husband was a year ahead of me in the university. When we got married, I felt we could not both go for higher degrees so I decided he should go ahead and get his PhD, while I took care of the children. My family was my priority. I didn’t know I would ever become anything. I just wanted to take care of the children, we have five of them and today, I have no regret. Today, they are my backbone after my husband. They are all doing well because I paid the price to take care of them."

"For many years, I was a technician but when I moved to academics the Lord blessed my work, everything I found out was new. It took me a long time to get to where I am today because I devoted myself to my family. However, when I joined academics, my husband gave me all the necessary support. Even when I was always in the lab and would get home late, he didn’t complain. So, I had peace. I sacrificed a lot but God has rewarded me more than I could ever ask for."

"It was not easy. When I went to do research at Oxford, I left my baby, the only son who was one and a half years in Nigeria, crying. However, the work I was to do for one year, I did it in seven months. No laxity, working hard so I could get back home in time. My husband and my mother supported me. In the African setting, if you have a good home, you can make it. If your husband is not in support of what you are doing, you are in trouble. There is no template. If God places you in a family where your husband and in-laws like you, you will combine the two successfully. As a woman, you need the love, support and cooperation of your husband. Both of you must ensure that your children too face their studies so they too can be successful. When God gives you a vision and you do it, with His help you will succeed. When I have challenges, I go to God and He helps me out. As a woman you can achieve a lot by being nice to people. Be charismatic. Always leave your problem at home. Pray and ask God to help you, He is always there to help."

"The awareness in Nigeria is very low. How many people are doing what we are doing? My retirement money has been going into this project since 2012. My family and friends have been supporting me financially. However, I am not in it for monetary gain. The children we are doing it for are grateful and I am deriving joy from what I am doing. My advice is: Be aware, know your genotype as a youth, be educated about it and make informed decision later in life. That way, the frequency of SCD will gradually decrease and the burden of it will be reduced in Nigeria."

"Sickle Cell Hope Alive Foundation (SCHAF) came from scarf which is something you put on your head to look beautiful. SCHAF is about giving hope to people born with sickle cell disorder. God gave me the ability to transform peoples’ lives by talking to them. When I talk to people, they understand the purpose of God in their lives. So, I decided to create awareness to people with sickle cell disorder and give them hope."

"While still in UCH, one day, my director, Prof Tomori, told me to translate my research to the community so I would leave the lab and run to Yemetu and Adeoyo hospitals to tell them about what they can do, that was how I started. Later, Dr Obembe and I formed Sickle Cell Association of Nigeria (SCAN). We were going to churches and organisations to create awareness about sickle cell disorder. When I retired from UCH, I could not continue using SCAN, that was how SCHAF started. We have expanded the scope from awareness alone to “make prevention by making,” Know Your Genotype (KYG), a point of care today."

"My friends and pharmaceutical companies give me drugs, I use my money to buy drugs too. People are joining me to take care of them. In 2019, we started the leg ulcers treatment; which is N5,000 per week, per wound. We stopped it in December because we had spent over three million naira on it. We treated 21 wounds. We are doing more than we hoped. It is expanding in leaps and bounds. Last year was the first time we got grants for SCHAF to do research from Gilead Sciences in America. We took 1,000 patients and found very interesting result of Hepatitis B, C and HIV. Contrary to what we thought these patients are now taking care of themselves better because of the awareness. They are not falling into the same pit that ordinary youths are falling into. We are making tremendous efforts and we are getting results."

"My Current Research work is on Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C Prevalence and Epidemiology in Sickle Cell Patients and Controls in South West Nigeria. Community Access and participation towards an attitudinal change for a Preventive approach to Sickle Cell disease in South west Nigeria. Advocacy and Support for Sickle Cell Affected Individuals and their significant others in the Community in South West Nigeria."

"There cannot be peace when Africa governments failed to ensure free flow of information to the people it governed. Information is treated as if it is the property of few, there is the need for transparency to achieve effective sustainable peace."

"You need the help of both men and women to negotiate, and sustain peace, stressing that the country is touted as a peaceful nation for now but for how long."

"Respect for each other is one of the recipes for sustained peace and tranquility and urged all to be decorous in their utterances."

"Peace promoted investment and that effective governance was measured by the quality of its public services and the ability to deliver on its promises."

"The objective is to look at women at the work place and how they can be helped to make the maximum impact."

"When you are a house wife it is assumed you don't work, But if u calculate the amount of time that goes into cooking, cleaning, washing and taking care of children it's a lot."

"Then there is the crucial issue of the Irish border. If, in any deal, Northern Ireland is to be treated differently from the rest of the UK then anyone who believes in the Union could not possibly support that deal. No doubt there will be some flowery EU-speak designed to hide the true intention and we will be told that as it is never intended to be needed then we shouldn’t worry."

"While I understand that Ireland was quite shocked at our decision to Leave, so much of the controversy over the border has been manufactured by it to try to keep Northern Ireland bound by EU regulations and different from the rest of the UK."

"I’m pro-union, I’ll do anything to make sure that the United Kingdom has Northern Ireland as an integral part of it on the same terms as any other part of the United Kingdom when we leave the EU."

"I don't have to believe in conspiracy theories to see that the Irish Government and the European Union have been from day one working closely on tactics particularly relating to the border question."

"I thought our Shadow Foreign Secretary saying she would be campaigning for Remain is quite shocking and goes 100% against our manifesto. More and more people are feeling more confirmed in their views that politicians say one thing in their manifestos and then change their view."

"I'm actually going to be voting in Northern Ireland and unfortunately the Labour Party is so anti-democratic in Northern Ireland that they allow people to join but they don't put up candidates. [...] So I'll be voting for a pro-union candidate in Northern Ireland."

"I'm pro-union. I would not dream of voting for Sinn Fein, I wouldn't dream of voting for the SDLP."

"[The vote for the Conservative Party in the 2019 general election was] what we needed for stability because now the European Union knows that we're not going to revoke Article 50. We're not going to have a second referendum. We're going to get out, and they will have to change their attitude, too, to the negotiations. And we will get, I hope, within the next year a good free trade deal with the European Union. And of course, then we will be discussing with the United States to get an even closer relationship with you as well."

"We can be a successful independent country like the United States, working, cooperating with the rest of the world."

"I think we all kind of know how we got here, that Northern Ireland was sacrificed because it could have been that we weren’t going to get Brexit at all."

"I personally couldn't vote for the Withdrawal Agreement because of Northern Ireland but I could understand many of my colleagues in the Leave campaign because they have to do it."

"There are people in Northern Ireland, leading politicians, who say, and it's true, that Northern Ireland has now become a form of colony. The EU’s first kind of colony."

"If Stormont goes back with the present Windsor Framework, they in fact would be almost like what happened during the war with the Vichy government, where all those [w:Member of the Legislative Assembly (Northern Ireland)|MLAs]] [Members of the Legislative Assembly] would be collaborators with a kind of colonial government."

"Taking foreign laws from a foreign legislature, governing much of our economy in Northern Ireland and keeping us in a foreign customs code whereby GB, Great Britain, our country, where our capital is, becomes a third country, becomes our foreign country – it’s just not acceptable."

"[On Northern Ireland remaining part of the UK] I don't think anyone from a pro-union background should fear Keir Starmer becoming the next prime minister of the United Kingdom."

"[[w:Flag of Ireland|[T]he tricolour]] is not my flag ... I genuinely don't feel Irish. Is there something wrong with that?"

"I was always very cynical about the European Union."

"I don't fit into a mould."

"Kate Hoey is an asset to the Labour Party. She has been a brave and principled fighter for what she believes, and yesterday’s announcement, though understandable, is regrettable. I wish her well."

"The University of Texas in Dallas has kept me at the nearest possible level to nothing."

"Pure math is rather a farce … physics is really super."

"We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done."

"Education is a war against ignorance. Quality science education is not cheap. If we are serious about science education, we should declare war on ignorance and provide the necessary resources to fight it."

"When in 1993/94, during the planning of a televised quiz programme on science, I was asked to be the Quiz Mistress, I could not say No."

"Prof Addy was a strong advocate of women in science and a champion of the development of plant medicine who helped place the University of Ghana on the map of world scholarship."

"(Students) take courses in science subjects……The practical component of the program may be dismissed in one phrase: subject to availability of funds…..The fact that finance is the main problem with respect to capacity building in the sciences is acknowledged…Yet, there has been no special initiative to find solutions to the problem. When it comes to science, we in Ghana want to go to heaven but we do not want to die."

"Eighty per cent of our newspapers are anti-PC. There is no area that is not up for discussion. I do not believe that people go around on their tiptoes afraid to offend women or ethnic minorities. But we have become worse at the exchange of ideas. We are not good any more at having really honest debates without upsetting people. We have become very good at abusive, hysterical exchanges and less good at intelligent debate. We do need to develop a healthy trade in ideas."

"Millions of people in the world – including in Hong Kong, Afghanistan, Uganda, Thailand, Egypt and Syria – are prepared to die for the vote and this dabbler is contemptuous of that right. Incidentally, Isis and al-Qaeda share that contempt. As for revolutions – has Brand ever experienced one?"

"Early ethernet developers... objected to a roundoff error that exceeded the ARPANET's entire bandwidth, but marketing won out."

"Many people equate the word ‘daemon’ with the word ‘demon’, implying some kind of Satanic connection between Unix and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. ‘Daemon’ is actually a much older form of ‘demon’; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person's character or personality. The ancient Greeks' concept of a ‘personal daemon’ was similar to the modern concept of a ‘guardian angel’ – ‘eudaemonia’ is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, Unix systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons."

"Lots of people told me not to fight, including leaders of the Jewish community, who were fearful that I was giving him a platform. [...] Many of them told me to settle. Don't fight, ignore it. But if I lost, it would become illegal to call the world's leading Holocaust denier a denier. And what he would then say is, "Ok, I'm not a denier, but the court ruled in my favour, ipso facto, the David Irving version of the Holocaust is the genuine version.""

"You're allowed to stand up at Hyde Park Corner and say the Holocaust didn't happen. But do I have to invite you Cambridge or Yale to give you a platform to say so? No. There are not two sides to every story. You can argue [about] why the Holocaust happened, but not that it happened."

"Yesterday's heinous, barbaric terrorism against Israeli civilians is the most lethal assault against Jews since the Holocaust. There is no justification whatsoever for this mass murder. None."

"For me, very little gets to me, except to do my work that I have to do and I must say up till now, I still believe that 99.99% of the judiciary from magistrates all the way to the Chief Justice, they are there to simply do their work."

"It's been going on in this country (Ghana) for the longest time, when I was appointed by President w:Jerry Rawlings, I became an NDC judge. When I make a decision against the NDC, I became an NPP judge and so on and so forth...and these are some of the unnecessary pressures that are put on the judiciary, not by anybody saying go this way or that way, but public perception, sometimes it gets to you."

"And you know what, I cannot fathom the reason for something being done in a particular way, especially when its been done for others but its not being done for others, I start getting suspicious, I have grown to the age where I have seen it all, and therefore I easily become suspicious."

"It's (being a Judge) been full, it's been interesting, it's been restful. and I can choose my times more effectively than before...but for me, it's been very good...no I have served, I finished, I'm happy to be retired, I'm happy I'm not each time saddled with having to write judgements and agonizing with decisions and so on and so forth...so, I really don't miss the work. And I don't think that most judges after a long pause on the bench miss the daily grind, I doubt it."

"There are standards for the public service...and conflict of interest is something that always can be dealt with, whether it is written in black and white or not... and conflict of interest does not necessarily have to be actual; it can be potential."

"Everything in this world that you can arrange in such a way that the dealings are at an arm's length is better than somebody's arm twisted and another person's arm is in their pocket."

"If you insist on ideology....which I thought was outdated after Communism....Maybe I can say I am egalitarian."

"If by the grace of God, I've got a voice why shouldn't I use it? In fact, I've decided that after this I am always going to find a voice to espouse. Why shouldn't I? I think that is why God has given me life beyond retirement and I think that every day after retirement I must use it to worship God."

"Nobody tells me what to think, except God and nobody can tell me what to do with my time and what to say about anything going on in this country (Ghana). Thank God we have a constitution, flawed though it might be but at least the right to say what I want to say and the freedom of conscience, that's mine and nobody will trample on it however influential they are."

"I find it wicked, I find it disrespectful, I find it unlawful, I find it totally wrong, period! Because you don’t solve your problems by sacrificing your aged. That is the last thing you should do."

"When they are sounding hopeful, it is about getting a visa of one type or the other or getting a university admission outside. Most often their eyes and hope are external and not in Ghana which I think is extremely sad.”"

"For how long are we going to be in this situation or circumstance where you don’t really see much hope in the eyes of young people? When you get talking to them they don’t sound too hopeful."

"am not an economist I don’t stay awake because of the details of the economy but many times what keeps me awake is what is going to happen to the young people."

"Those are the things that make me sad because somebody with PhD should actually be seeing themselves as employing people who will be employing other people."

"If it takes money to do that then there should be access to that money without being necessarily identifiable that you are from here or from there."

"Sophia Akuffo is a different type of human being. She doesn't need to do this, but she's doing it! God bless her."

"Germaine Greer first impinged on my own life in my final year as an undergraduate at Newnham College, Cambridge. We women students were all gathered together in the college hall for the annual Founder's Day Feast, and as we finished eating, the principal called us to order for the speeches. As a hush descended, one person continued to speak, too engrossed in her conversation to notice, her strong Australian voice reverberating round the room. At the graduates' table, Germaine was explaining with passion that there could be no liberation for women, no matter how highly educated, as long as we were required to cram our breasts into bras constructed like mini-Vesuviuses two stitched, white, cantilevered cones which bore no resemblance to the female anatomy. The willingly suffered discomfort of the Sixties bra, she opined vigorously, was a hideous symbol of male oppression."

"If I turn out bad, please blame Aziz because he taught me how to do and handle matters the best way I can."

"The history and story of liberation is incomplete without Aziz’s contribution. It is no coincidence that he wrote in his biography that his life experience cannot be separated from the ANC and SACP."

"Very little is going to support women in South Africa. Ugandans are so serious about that policy, such that all annual budgets go through their human rights entities to be approved"

"We need to liberate women and create safe spaces that offer them economic freedom and independence because had it not been for women, many homes would have collapsed. They’re strong mentally and very strategic thinkers who raise children single-handedly"

"I am not saying I have solutions but merely seeing signs of a psychologically affected community that needs to shift to a new way of doing things, and doing away with stereotypes that promote violence, the bullying of individuals and infringing on their human rights."

"Young couples also need guidance in creating these safe spaces and healthy marriages. That will alleviate GBV and domestic violence. We can do it. It’s not as bad as it looks"

"A typical example is that the average woman wakes up every morning to nurture a newborn, raises the child in hardships, putting herself aside to ensure the child's growth and development. And then get abused when she brings and nurtures life. What is the problem?"

"Commemorating Disability Awareness Month offers an opportunity for all of us to remove social barriers and perceptions while improving the quality of life of people with disabilities through concrete action of empowering persons with disabilities through resourceful, sustainable and safe environments"

"People with disabilities should not be excluded from their constitutional rights due to disability. The National Disability Rights Policy, namely, the White Paper on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, aligns with the National Development Plan and the Strategic Priorities of the Sixth Administration in calling for economic transformation and job creation."

"While people with disabilities continue to be unemployed and underemployed, it remains important to promote and support the empowerment of persons with disabilities to reduce economic vulnerability"

"Disability may be present from birth, or occur during a person's lifetime. It may be permanent, temporary or episodic in nature."

"It was a privilege for me, but it also had the benefit of renewing the ambitions of young women in my country."

"I think time has come for me to pass on the baton to the younger generation. We have done our part."

"It is important for us to groom other women, especially the young ones."

"I come from a family of women leaders, and my husband was also active in politics. At that time, I was working with NGOs. After my husband passed away, I made a deliberate decision; I believed that those of us in leadership positions in civil society need to step forward. I was then elected to Parliament in 2001. Initially, I served in the opposition, but since the last elections, our party, the Patriotic Front, has been in government."

"In response to the question, "When and why did you decide to join politics?" Inonge Wina replied"

"My primary responsibility is to my constituency, where I've successfully lobbied for development. I’ve also made significant contributions in raising awareness of gender issues within the community."

"In response to the question, "What have you achieved in politics? Inonge Wina replied"

"I want to see a reduction in poverty levels, ensuring that every Zambian benefits from our policies. I also hope that every girl receives an education, just like boys, and that women enjoy the same rights and opportunities as men. In 50 years, Zambia should transition from being a developing country to a middle-income country."

"I want women to enjoy the same rights and benefits as men”"

"Inonge Wina speaks as Zambia’s first female Vice President"

"I think the life of honourable [Alexander] Chikwanda has been a demonstration of dedication to public service. When you are a leader in politics, do not make enemies because this job of politics is neither here nor there. We are just elected to serve our people, to serve the nation and after that, you become an ordinary citizen. And you should be able to relate to other citizens in a manner that does not antagonize anybody. So there are many lessons we can learn from the life of this man. And for me, I have collaborated with him throughout our adult life. So we come from that generation of service to the nation. So that is why really, we shall miss him. His counsel and his advice have always been very genuine."

"Remember, this was the era of The Cold War, the black and civil rights movements in America, and the decolonization of Africa, so all of these had an impact on me and contributed to shaping my outlook on life and my dedication to public service."

"When John F. Kennedy said, ‘Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country,’ that statement was not meant just for the USA but for every youth in the world."

"They can't get a home for their children, they see black and ethnic minority communities moving in and they are angry [...] When I knock on doors I say to people, 'are you tempted to vote BNP?' and many, many, many - eight out of 10 of the white families - say 'yes'. That's something we have never seen before, in all my years. Even when people voted BNP, they used to be ashamed to vote BNP. Now they are not."

"What has happened in Barking and Dagenham is the most rapid transformation of a community we have ever witnessed. Nowhere else has changed so fast. When I arrived in 1994, it was a predominantly white, working class area. Now, go through the middle of Barking and you could be in Camden or Brixton. That is the key thing that has created the environment the BNP has sought to exploit. ["Mrs Hodge claimed the anger is not down to racism"] It is a fear of change. It is gobsmacking change."

"At this moment of grave danger, we simply cannot allow the party to flounder, become utterly irrelevant to the political debate and disintegrate into a second-rate pressure group. Make no mistake — unless we listen to our voters, our party faces political oblivion."

"I am a secular, immigrant Jew. I have never been active in the Jewish community; my two marriages were to non-Jews. I have visited Israel a number of times and have been a vocal critic of successive Israeli governments on many counts. But I am a Jew. My grandmother and my uncle were murdered by Hitler and many cousins and other relatives were slaughtered in the gas chambers. Indeed, my grandfather was one of six siblings; we are the only surviving line left and that was because my parents were in Egypt when the war broke out. I joined the Labour party to fight racism. In the 1960s the Labour party was the natural home for Jews. To find myself 50 years later, in 2018, confronting antisemitism in my own party is completely and utterly awful."

"Within the Labour Party, we now have a culture which sadly has become embedded, which was allowed to drift from the fringes of the Labour Party into the heart of the party, which enables people to express anti-Semitism. Probably my talking to you this morning will fill my Twitter with abusive tweets which are basically anti-Semitic."

"The terrible truth is that [Mr Corbyn] constantly makes himself the centre of the argument. What we need to root out is anti-Semitism, and for as long as he is one of the individuals who refuses to accept the extent of anti-Semitism in the party, who constantly says that people like me have been politically motivated and are attacking him personally instead of attacking the anti-Semitism that he expressly tolerates, and has allowed to spread right through the party - that's really the problem."

"[T]he government proposes to outsource the registration of companies to the professionals working in this space, like accountants, lawyers and company service providers. While most professionals act with integrity, it is people in these very jobs who have been responsible for creating the web of opaque corporate structures that obscure illicit financial flows. So why does the government refuse to put in place robust systems to regulate, check and discipline the professionals involved so that the few bad apples can be eliminated?"

"It was only because of his actions and his words that I came to the decision in 2018; this man was an antisemite and a racist."

"[After the 2019 general election] Had Corbyn won then, I think things would have been different; I couldn't have stayed in the party."

"[Is Labour never having a female leader "shameful"?] Yes. [...] Oh, it’s horrible. There’s still sexism, which is why you can never take your foot off the accelerator."

"Kishinev. Babi Yar. Munich. The sites of Jewish massacres throughout history. Now there is another place that will for ever be associated with the slaughter of innocent Jews: Kfar Aza. Kibbutz Kfar Aza was home to about 800 people and was established in 1951 by Jewish refugees from Morocco and Egypt (where I was born and from which my family escaped in 1949). Like so many kibbutzim, its founders were idealists, living communally on a model with socialist foundations. Its name – literally meaning "Gaza Village" – reflects its location, just over three miles from the city of Gaza."

"On Saturday, the worst nightmares of the people of Kfar Aza were realised. A barrage of rockets sent men, women and children into their safe rooms. Then hundreds of Hamas terrorists breached the security barrier. A group of them, fully armed, went from house to house in Kfar Aza, searching for Jews to slaughter. People were burned alive in their homes and cars. Babies and young children were killed and mutilated. Others were dragged into Gaza as hostages. These heinous crimes are unspeakable, and yet we must speak them. The world must know what happened to the people of Kfar Aza."

"[T]wo of my granddaughters are of secondary school age, so they go to a single-sex girls secondary school. And because it's single-sex, there's a very large Muslim population there. The school originally put up some sort of display where they had an Israeli flag and a Palestinian flag. Good stuff. But the Muslim girls tore down the Israeli flag and replaced it with another Palestinian flag. So, only two Palestinian flags. The girls came home — they live next door to me — and they said, "We're not going to tell anybody we're Jewish." So then we had a bit of a discussion about that. They went back the next day and the one who is — she's just 12 — some of these Muslim girls came up to her and said: "Are you Jewish?" So she says, "Yes". So they said, "Which side are you on?" Terrible. So she sort of said, "I’m not on either side," and then they started poking her with a Palestinian flag."

"We as a nation should understand that how we treat those who escape from persecution and genocide is central to our reputation as a country that boasts a humanitarian approach to genocide and the Holocaust."

"Told by leading Government politicians that they pose an "existential threat" to the West's way of life, that they are part of a "hurricane" of mass migration, that MPs feel "besieged by asylum seekers", and that asylum seekers are "invading" Britain. We should reflect on what we say and what we do today before we exercise any moral entitlement to condemn the atrocities of the past. The language we use today matters."

"I faced tough time with my opponents during my campaign time but that didn't scare me as a woman, I urge all of you (women) to rise up and push the agenda of women’s involvement in decision-making process."

"If you put something on your mind and your heart to do and to change something or situation, do not look back, stay focused and move systematically towards your goal."

"The issue is it’s not how many years you have been there [near power], but that the value that you would bring to the Ghanaian leadership. My value that I would bring to the Ghanaian leadership is about the people, not the leader. As such, what I have done for Ghana is what will show and they would have to judge me on that directly."

"We have to instill in our children a certain traditional way even as we become modernized so that they do not move too far away from who we are as a people. Who is in charge of what our children see and emulate? Education is a tool; your upbringing is your tradition and your life."

"We need to constantly improve on the quality of life and so we need to read as individuals and inculcate the habit of reading to the young ones. We have to encourage the young ones to read but because of the existence of iPads and tablets they are not picking books to read out of curiosity."

"It is only through writing that we capture who we are, where we have come from and where we are going and this must be written so generations yet unborn will know who we truly are."

"Culturally, we refer to nature as ‘asase yaa’ and women are held in reverence spiritually and culturally, so why the disconnect in our contemporary society where women are treated like second-class citizens."

"The upcoming general election (2020 Ghanaian general election) is really not about me or my individuality but about our nation and our future. We should try to refocus our lenses as a people on long term national development visions...We must have the ability to have a collective vision born out of our varied experiences, skills set and unique characteristics to propel the best, bright and most patriotic citizens to advance a nonpartisan agenda for a continuous development."

"You will have a miracle on your hands because I know it when we go out and I feel it."

"It is important for me to open doors for many other women to be there (presidential candidate) at some point or the other. I am making sure that children of this country (Ghana) see women as an absolute part of national development."

"We recognised that for women to be really empowered for development, we needed to make them economically active"

"I am committed to laying the foundations of a prosperous future for Ghana so that all Ghanaians can have the confidence in a country built on a system that rewards their hard work and their sacrifice. I believe in creating a Ghana where mothers and fathers have the opportunity to invest in the future of their children; where Ghanaian genius is rewarded and where meritocracy is paramount. I believe in a thriving economy that creates equal opportunity for every Ghanaian"

"Women's vital role in promoting peace in the family, the country and the world at large is not in question and they must be given the chance to play a critical part in identifying and assessing solutions for the betterment of the country (Ghana)."

"My desire is to see the emancipation of women at every level of development to enable them to contribute and benefit from the socio-economic and political progress of the country"

"Through my work as both an activist and a politician, I strive to demonstrate that it is our continuing responsibility, as African women, to challenge inequality, resist oppression, and question our exclusion from every level of African society"

"Certainly, we cherish our cultural heritage and the centuries old traditions from which our society derives its identity and resilience. But we also acknowledge that practices that undermine human dignity, retard social progress and bring about unnecessary misery and suffering must not be countenance by a society that appreciates the worth of its people."

"I didn't Join the NDC, I helped Build It."

"Her (Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings) unwavering advocacy on gender equality and equity, as well as her pioneering efforts for the cause of Ghanaian Women and children are worth noting...you are an inspiration to women everywhere and a shining beacon for our young girls to emulate, we celebrate you."

"Yes, she (Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings) has been a very bold lady I can confirm that she's been one of the catalysts that have brought the issue of women empowerment not only in Ghana, but globally."

"She (Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings) was special and she’s still special and for me, it had to be her. It was a privilege for me to be acquainted with her."

"For the past 12 years she has stood by her husband in the struggle to restore Ghana. She has led a group of active women to help empower Ghanaian women, freeing them from being hewers of wood and drawers of water to be[ing] actors in the political arena"

"Matters" her focus turns to time: “not,”"

"A thin trickle of now’s, but a multidimensional world full of luxuriant plasticity."

""I don’t have all the answers to old age. In fact, I rarely think about it"."

""I have never consciously chosen to keep on working, for example, even though I’m the proud owner of a Freedom Pass (and I will never, ever vote for any political party that takes it away!)".#"

""Loneliness is the scourge of old age, which means there has never been a better time to enjoy those water-cooler moments"."

""I’m running in the last lap of life. But instead of relegating myself to deterioration, I try to regard myself as simply fraying at the edges"."

"When you have 50 per cent of women filling the top jobs, it becomes just uninteresting. Now, a few stand out – a few run companies, a few are famous. People have a go at them."

""There’s no right way of doing it. Nobody looks at blokes in boring suits and criticises them"."

"It's quite hard, especially because of African traditional culture where a woman's place is in the kitchen"

"Women have a tough time contesting elections and they have to show exemplary proficiency to get recognised."

"People were not used to seeing women in public meetings talking just like male politicians do. They realised that women can talk back."

"For a woman to be successful, she has to have a very supporting husband and family."

"Parliament is very unfriendly for a woman with a child. We are talking about it and we would like to see more women with children getting into parliament and then performing their parental duties without hindrance, without neglecting the children.""

"Are you the man from the Socialist Society?"

"It's as if they're saying that Neil without my ideological fanaticism wouldn't have the courage of his convictions. [...] They can't imagine a relationship of partnership. There has to be one person forcing an opinion on the other."

"[On Margaret Thatcher, then the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom] I can only think of one thing she has done for women [...] and that is to prove that being a woman is not an electoral liability."

"[Speaking in Buka, Papua New Guinea after flying from the Solomon Islands] As we were taking off, the militia were at the end of the runway, firing at us."

"I heard a noise, but didn't know it was gunfire."

"You can suffer the pain of change or suffer remaining the way you are."

"I want you to know and really understand that anyone who has been abused can fully recover if they will give their life completely to Jesus."

"One of the greatest revelations of my life is: I can choose my thoughts and think things on purpose. In other words, I don’t have to just think about whatever falls into my mind"

"Forgiveness is not a feeling,it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before Gode."

"Just deciding to forgive isn’t enough because willpower alone won’t work,we need divine strength from God."

"Praying for those who have hurt us is vital to successfully forgiving them."

"Self-righteous attitude is a sin that we can be blinded to because we’re so focused on what the other person did wrong."

"Unforgiveness finds excuses to talk about what people have done to us, and we’ll tell anyone who will listen."

"To change the negative narrative of gender discrimination, well qualified and competent female Lawyers need to campaign, maybe, more vigorously for the positions they want. They must continue to solicit for the votes of male Lawyers who are in the majority, as well as securing the support of their fellow women."

"We pray that there will be more female Lawyers who will offer themselves to serve the N.B.A. in the capacity of President and other positions, in the near future."

"I feel very sad that the electronic voting was not conducted fairly. In my view, the election should be cancelled. An audit should be conducted. There are too many complaints. We are Lawyers – we should give a good example to Nigerians."

"… a flexible gender system … meant … certain women could occupy roles and positions usually monopolized by men, and thereby exercise considerable power and authority over both men and women."

"As men increased their labour force, wealth and prestige through the accumulation of wives, so also did women through the institution of "female husbands.‟ When a woman paid money to acquire another woman, the woman who was bought had the status and customary rights of a wife, with respect to the woman who bought her, who was referred to as her husband, and the "female husband‟ had the same rights as a man over his wife."

"Man seems to have wanted… to give the universe his own gender…anything believed to have value belongs to men and is marked by their gender…he gives his own gender to God, to the sun."

"“Since women were basically seen as producers, the principals of control and protection applied to them throughout their productive period, whether as daughters, wives, or mothers. It is said when a woman outgrows the question, 'whose daughter is she?' people then ask, 'whose wife is she?' Only as matrons were women no longer valued in their sexual or reproductive capacity; matrons were, therefore, beyond control."

"A woman at this stage of her life no longer sought to be sexually attractive to men, and was no longer in sexual competition with other women. Matrons, in order to succeed economically and wield power, had to free themselves of 'messy' and 'demeaning' female domestic services, which included sexual services. Woman-to-woman marriage was one of the ways of achieving this. The younger wife would then take over the domestic duties."

"In the traditional society, a flexible gender system meant that male roles were open to certain categories of women through such practices as nhaye, 'male daughters,' igba ohu, 'female husbands. These institutions placed women in a more favourable position for the acquisition of wealth and formal political power and authority. Under colonialism, these indigenous institutions – condemned by the Church as 'pagan' and anti-Christian – were abandoned or reinterpreted to the detriment of women."

"“The fact that biological sex did not always correspond to ideological gender meant that women could play roles usually monopolized by men, or be classified as 'males' in terms of power and authority over others. As such roles were not rigidly masculinized or feminized, no stigma was attached to breaking gender rules. Furthermore, the presence of an all-embracing goddess-focused religion favoured the acceptance of women in statuses and roles of authority and power."

"She is said to have had about 24 wives… the qualities attributed to her were hard work and perseverance. She was … a clever woman, who knew how to utilize her money."

"Extremely powerful and assertive women were able to dominate their husbands."

"The men were no longer known by their own names, but by reference to their role as husband."

"It was with pride that Nwokocha Agbadi returned the twenty bags of cowries to his former son-in-law and he even added a live goat as a token of insult."

"This fine collection of poetry on love, nature and Sufism bursts forth with pure humanity and elegance of language. Dominated by the presence of beautiful, dignified womanhood that is tough but loving, giving and grateful, the poems peel off layers of time to reveal memories that refuse to dissipate. A celebratory voice singing the beauty of fall colors and the magic of Africa's star-studded sky and enchanted moonlit night is interlaced with a strong, unyielding moral voice that speaks against the injustice and bullying of the powerful, and the pillage and greed of empire. Amadiume's beautiful, moving, and well-crafted collection returns to nature what belongs to it--simplicity; and reminds humanity of what it has lost--the love that is divine. Love is Great!"

"Ifi Amadiume's Circles of Love speaks with passion of love gained, love lost, love desired. These are poems which embrace the pains and joys of exile--memory, sweetness, history and a sense of peace with the landscapes of home wherever these may be."

"Love is a many splendored thing and Ifi Amadiume spins the wonder of love in circles of memory, humor, joy and even political satire with a lyrical and often intimate voice that describes family, friends and special places. Here are poems you will want to read and remember."

"Read for my Anthropology of Gender class. This is an incredibly thorough ethnography that traces the history, colonisation, and modern traditions of a small area in Nigeria. Amadiume doesn’t just reclaim, explain, and evaluate the customs of the Igbo people from the town where she was born, she also demonstrates the long history of how colonialism has distorted, misconstrued, and tried to erase them. It makes me wonder how many indigenous religions we’ve completely lost due to the efforts of colonisation trying to either mould them to the “White Christian ideal” or wipe them out completely. It’s a sad thought, but I’m still glad Ifi Amadiume is here to speak for herself, taking back the fierce power of anthropology from those who would use it for ill."

"I bought Male Daughters, Female Husbands on the title alone, expecting it to be an anthropological study discussing how an indigenous society had made space and roles for queer people. I was very wrong. Instead, Ifi Amadiune presents a brilliant study of how the Nnobi of Nigeria made space and roles for women, and how the Christian patriarchy took those roles away. Amadiune challenges her fellow anthropologists and western feminists about their assumptions about African societies. (Namely, that colonialism helped African women get out from under the thumb of bad African men, yet they still need western feminists to save them further. Amadiune clearly demonstrates how neither of these things are true and how these kinds of simplified views of any indigenous society are steeped in racism."

"This was my dream since my childhood days."

"I can't say there's just one thing that I'm satisfied with. But […] when people start to tell you that you have made a difference in their lives; when you see land policies change and companies begin to pay differently, that men and women should both be there, that is an achievement."

"Now we are diversifying food crop production and emphasising healthy diets, bringing in water literacy, and addressing gender inequities and children’s [wellbeing]. It’s been like a whole community effort."

"The journal was premised on what I had done in the field – it is like looking at an African village and everything that goes on in there! – but ultimately, [it’s about] how to feed your family a healthy diet."

"When I started the journal, even getting it indexed internationally was not easy because it's interdisciplinary. So, in terms of gaps, I would say it’s that interdisciplinarity that is missing."

"Working on climate, environmental sanitation, food processing, crop growing, food allocation, gender issues – this is all connected, [but] people still operate in silos. I was very happy when the UN came up with the Sustainable Development Goals and goal number 17 was partnerships and collaboration. You have to work together to be able to achieve something tangible."

"Mum didn’t spare the rod, she beat us to shape"

"I will say, the best of party slogan anywhere in the world, but unfortunately the plague was philosophical understanding of the manifesto."""

"My loss at the primaries would continue to haunt the women folk in the country for a long time to come."

"They don’t appear to be the best but whatever happens we must have the patience and spirit of tolerance because we will not ask people to go and riot."

"The ignorance about the high sense of responsibility of claiming to be a progressive party, and only thinking of the slogan and not acting practically."

"When you have a constitution and you don’t abide by the constitution and whatever your slogan is, they are the first steps of preventing corruption."

"And if we choose to disobey God, to disobey the words of our mouth, of course, we will go astray."

"As a mother, it is my duty to continue to nurture the conscience of the human specie.."

"Nigerian women should tell me what I have done wrong and how I have misrepresented them that made them afraid to vote for me."

"Parents should monitor their children even though some of them try to dress decently at homes but when they go back to school especially those in the high institutions, they dress indecently. Parents, therefore, should monitor their children by ensuring that the clothing they take to school were properly checked and ensure that you ask your children questions and be close to them"

"Parents should not be too harsh or too strict to avoid scaring them away and anything that concerns them should not be taken for granted. Show them love and mentor them; more importantly, always pray for them for God’s guidance and direction."

"She said she would invoke parliamentary rules that could result in the loss of seats for these members."

"My older daughter, Emily, had ME for 14 years. Thankfully she is better now and lives with me. She recently joined Kabbalah and changed her named to a more biblical name, "Miriam" – a little hard for me as she was named after my maternal grandmother, Emily, whom I adored. But I get round it by calling her "Em"."

"The Nationwide editor, Michael Bunce, asked me if there was any particular film I'd like to make for them, so I asked if they would send me to Belfast to report on the Troubles. He said he would need time to think about it. Then he rang me back: "The thing is, Esther, what would you wear?" It was such a serious dilemma, he decided I couldn't film there."

"The episode of February 28, 1988, was just a normal one in the BBC’s consumer series That's Life!. ... But deep in the centre of the programme, where we always placed our most serious items, we had a unique moment that 35 years later still has the power to move and inspire. Nicholas Winton was revealed for the first time to have rescued more than 660 children, most of them Jewish, from being murdered in the Holocaust. And three of those children learnt for the first time who had saved them, how he had done it and, sitting with him in our studio audience, turned to him and thanked him for their lives. It was the only time in my professional life when, as a presenter, the emotion stopped me. I had to break off our recording, leave my chair and take a moment to wipe my eyes. We were the only factual programme that would have told his story that way because we were the only one with a studio audience. And we were thrilled to be able to stage another surprise for Nicky one week later, when we invited him back. This time I asked members of our audience to stand if they owed their lives to him. Nicky was once again sitting in the front row, so I asked him to turn round to see the whole ground floor audience in the television theatre standing."

"I have joined Dignitas. I have in my brain thought, well, if the next scan says nothing's working I might buzz off to Zurich – but it puts my family and friends in a difficult position because they would want to go with me. And that means that the police might prosecute them. So we've got to do something. At the moment, it’s not really working, is it?"

"When I started as a researcher in the BBC, I was working for an editor who was a self-confessed misogynist. He used to practise shooting by aiming his air gun at an aerosol can balanced just over my head. I made it a matter of pride not to flinch as the pellets whizzed by."

"Morality has gone to blazes. Everything is not about money."

"If you are given a role to play, think of what you will be portraying to the public and the impression people will have about you as a person because not everybody will know that what you play is not who or what you are."

"If you want to make a name for yourself, make a good name."

"As a mother, it is not easy to wait for a missing child to return -- it is very hard."

"You cannot put out a fire with petrol."

"Unless the parents practiced forgiveness and sought a peaceful solution to the conflict, they would destroy what they most wanted back."

"Bullets have no eyes. In the field, bullets would not know if a child was abducted or volunteered for the rebel army. War would destroy all these children."

"We prefer to cling to bitterness, but bitterness is corrosive. Like a container filled with salt, it will destroy everything because the Lord cannot forgive us if we cannot forgive others. Life is wonderful if we let God heal us."

"We rolled on, down Highway 25 and through the bluegrass hills of Kentucky. Soon we began to see signs. Signs that read: WHITE ONLY, COLORED NOT ALLOWED. Hours later, we left the Bluegrass State and crossed into Tennessee. Now we saw even more of the signs saying WHITE ONLY, COLORED NOT ALLOWED. We saw the signs above water fountains and in restaurant windows. We saw them in ice cream parlors and at hamburger stands. We saw them in front of hotels and motels, and on the restroom doors of filling stations. I didn't like the signs. I felt as if we were in a foreign land."

"Finally we reached Memphis. We got there at a bad time. Traffic was heavy and we got separated from the rest of the family. We tried to find them but it was no use. W had to go on alone. We reached the Mississippi state line and soon after we heard a police siren. A police car came up behind us. My father slowed the Cadillac, then stopped. Two white policemen got out of their car. They eyeballed the Cadillac and told my father to get out. "Whose car is this, boy?" they asked. I saw anger in my father's eyes. "It's mine," he said. "You're a liar," said one of the polciemen. "You stole this car.""

"Still though, I often thought of that Cadillac. We had had the Cadillac for only a little more than a month, but I wouldn't soon forget its splendor or how I'd felt riding around inside it. I wouldn't soon forget either the ride we had taken south in it. I would remember that ride and the gold Cadillac all my life."

"To speak of Judaism in such global terms as the "Jewish tradition" as belonging solely to the Ashkenazic or the Sephardic is absurd. That which is Jewish does not rest on blood or race, nor does it rest on uniformity of origin, nor even less on rigidity of thought and action. If we speak of philosophy, then the Sephardic tradition is the weightier; if we speak of a certain mysticism or of the resurgence of literary themes, then the Ashkenazi tradition is closer to our own times. But where fidelity to Torah or the oral tradition is concerned, both visions, and within both these visions, the multiplicity of their views, form the continuous circle that has maintained living Judaism to this day. Neither Ashkenazim nor Sephardim have the exclusive privilege of having preserved Judaism. It is the good fortune of Judaism that opposition and contradiction are its germinative elements. Ought we then to continue to foment in our children an antagonism which is not only anachronistic but-considering the narrow dwelling-ground-effectively disperses our communal identity for others as well as for Jews themselves, with respect to our continuing desire to be a source of living waters."

"His foot wounded, once again, on the sole, right where he was beginning to step with joy"

"The afternoon bubbles, and flows stealthily towards the lap of night. A lukewarm sky envelops the city, like a caress on a check, a pleasure of solitude that relieves eyes and ears."

"To follow one's own path means the rejection of those chosen by others, he knows it, and will remain alone, against wind and tide, tremulous warrior who brandishes his sword in the air to test its weight and mettle."

""Better to have scars than incurable wounds," Grandfather would say"

"She was always a child who anticipated things, believed in words yet to be spoken, in days that open to a recent now, in fairy tales. Sometimes she awoke with woodsy breezes in her hair and the amazement of finding herself a stranger to this time and world. What early banishment snatched the taste of immensity from her mouth? In her he recognized a perfume, a tenacious expectancy, perhaps the name of an unexpressed desire. In him she recognized a dream, a search, a brightness that awaits a powerful and inextinguishable irradiation."

"To the brink of what edges does a kiss lead?"

"He carries islands of peace in his hands; she, a burning river-bed of windmills and storms."

"All well-meaning Ghanaians to support the cause, to stand firm and join in the struggle to increase women’s participation in decision making."

"What cost us dearly is the affirmative action policy that became controversial. In my case for instance, my opponent told the delegates that I was the originator of the affirmative action policy and also the one who signed it because I am the NPP Women Caucus leader so when that law is made to stand, the Abirem seat will be a no go area for any man. Most of the delegates are men and such pronouncement scared them. So, that is one of the major reasons why I lost the primaries."

"I am not ready to discuss what accounted for my loss...I cannot say I lost because the winner doled out money to delegates to vote for him."

"Decisions on our economy, environment and society cannot only be based simply on current or recent data, temporal analysis is required to identify trends, evaluate impacts and make informed decisions for democratic governance."

"Our laws will have to be amended. At the moment the laws are so liberal. The idea was to attract investment but we are willing to take a look at our laws again. The mining industry must move from being an enclosure to being fully integrated into the Ghanaian local economy. Tax revenues are minimal. The nation does not hardly benefit from high mineral prices."

"“Women candidates were certainly running for statewide office in various places, but it was a tricky balance,” she said. “You couldn’t be too tough or people hated you. You couldn’t be too weak or people thought you couldn’t do the job. You were a witch or a bitch. It was a very complicated role to play.”"

"“I remember the advertising guy said, ‘You need a killer ad, but you can’t be seen as a killer,’"

"“Probably the most interesting, challenging and unlikely race I ran was for insurance commissioner,” Sebelius said. “The most terrifying thing was that I won and had to figure out what to do.”"

"“My father went into politics when I was 5 years old,” Sebelius said. “I did think that’s what families did in the fall — go door to door and put up yard signs. I didn’t know it was a volunteer activity. In our family, it was mandatory service.”"

"That sent a very powerful message,”"

"“Being governor, I believe, is the best job in America, because you can do things,”"

"Success in politics had much to do with timing, and she wasn’t convinced it would be possible for her to win in the current electoral climate."

"thumb|Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services“I find it so toxic and so difficult,” she said. “When I was running in Kansas, Kansas really had two Republican parties. A much more conservative antigovernment party and a more moderate branch of the party. The two branches fought with one another more than they fought with Democrats.”"

"“We’re still a way from universal coverage, we’re still a way from affordable care for everyone,”"

"A fruitful area of inquiry for researchers would be to measure whether public opinion favors incremental health care fixes or sweeping reform. Radical change would be counterproductive were it to a spark a backlash with the potential to undo hard-won gains,"

"“This was not a one-shot deal,” Sebelius said. “This was really a systematic march.”"

"That relentless battle is still underway,” Sebelius said. “The march toward universal coverage, as slow, difficult, and painful as it is, will continue in the United States of America, and I’m just delighted I had a small part in that wonderful march toward equity.”"

"Could we have used more time and testing? You bet. I’ve said that from the start,” “But the site actually works. And the great thing is, there’s a market behind the site that works even better. People have competitive choices and real information for the first time ever in this insurance market.”"

"I think what we said from the outset was, you know, this was fixing a very broken market– where individuals really were on their own,” she said. “If you were healthy and wealthy, you could get coverage. If you weren’t, you were pretty much on your own”"

"We also need to see black characters somewhere other than in films about slavery. We badly need something more contemporary and more pertinent."

"The revolution opened doors for us and allowed an enormous social mobility. Many walls that blocked communication were demolished, and taboos were cast out."

"Very often people abroad see us talking about our free education as some sort of empty political slogan but in fact it is a reality and a priority."

"For my family it [the revolution] meant achieving a real, tangible position in the social and political life of Cuba, which Fidel’s bearded revolutionaries [los barbudos] made possible. Those transformations opened the doors of the university to me, something that would have been impossible, given the slender means of my parents."

"one of its [society's] most sinister creatures: the practice of racial discrimination, a lever that always heightens racial prejudice. Both creatures make up racism."

"The purpose of any piece of writing is its existence before a reader’s eyes."

"For me, writing a poem means enormous enjoyment that reaches its culmination when the poem appears in print."

"The working class districts of Havana shaped my outlook"

"For my generation and for the generations that came after, Camilo Cienfuegos and Che Guevara preside over an irreversible constellation of heroes and, for that reason, have become integrated into the most beautiful popular imagination on the planet."

"For many years I have said, following the tradition of Nicolás Guillén, Fernando Ortiz and Alejo Carpentier, that whoever wants to understand Cuba cannot ignore its mestizo condition in which the Hispanic and African components cannot be divided because they have created a cosmovisión that is authentically original."

"In 1959, when the revolution triumphed, I was an adolescent. I had only lived 14 years in the other society. Today, with the passage of time, we see how different it was in 1959 to have the power of reasoning. I was a person whose sensibility, intelligence, and knowledge were in formation. Various members of my family-and I myself—were the objects of many racist demonstrations. In addition, I was a witness along with them to many others. Thus, the transformations that were starting to take place were obvious, unobjectionable. Notice that I use the word transformations but not changes. I do so because I think that when I’m speaking about transformations the reader must think of a process that moves forward in a progressive way; whereas if I speak about changes, one thinks of a magic leap toward some paradise. We have made extraordinary advances in this terrain. And yet it has been neither easy, nor by way of a magic wand. The social gains in this domain respond to a long-standing, well-defined awareness that supports the full dignity of all Cubans, whatever their class or ethnic origins or their sexual or religious preferences. Racial prejudices still exist, which these 40 years of efforts have not been able to eradicate completely. This is a reality. I can tell you that, in this sense, racial prejudice is defeated but not dead."

"My whole vision of the world, beyond the perspective of art, literature and specifically poetry, is affected by those three conditions, which cannot in any way be separated...I am not more of a black person than a woman; I am not more of a woman than a Cuban; I am not more of a black person than a Cuban. I am a brief combustion of those factors."

"We Cuban artists have played a decisive role not only in the Cuban society of today but also in its greatest definition throughout our history. We Cuban artists have contributed to improving our values, to articulating our character, to stimulating the clearest cultural resistance, to understanding ourselves better, to creating a world where, as the poet José Martí demanded, the most important currency is the full dignity of man and woman. We have offered that contribution through our work and, in many cases, through our efforts to transform the country. Sometimes utopian, sometimes feasible, our art operates in the spirit of modernity, service and independence."

"In Cuba we must respect all those writers who have maintained their space and their dignity beyond the question of making a hit at book fairs or in the commercial world. I respect all of them even if all of them are not to my taste or don’t make me happy."

"My country will remain there where it is, washed by the Gulf Stream, the Caribbean Sea and by that desire to exist and remain and last with its windows open to the purest elements in human civilization without renouncing social justice. I would earnestly hope that there is a greater understanding between our cultures, in favor of civilization, against war, against terrorism, against every regressive atavism. Art is the magic that will take us by the hand along the most beautiful of paths."

"Perhaps Nancy Morejón’s most precious gift to both readers and listeners is her complex portrait of empowered black women."

"Morejón has been recognized as one of the most celebrated and revered writers and intellectuals of the Cuban revolutionary period and one of the most important Caribbean women writers of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries...Her experiences and her fluency in the languages of the region have endowed her with a profound and rich voice that has helped shape our understanding of the Caribbean as a field of study."

"Up to now I have tried to make my life a gift for him. What is most important is that my life belongs to the Lord. He has often led me to hear him, unexpectedly, and this time he has come to me and I could not say no to what the Lord was asking me."

"[On dealing with sexism from male MPs] One of our colleagues from the northern group had complained about Mo [Mowlam]'s swearing, and he was in the tea room when we got there. So she said: "Oh, it's all right, I won't swear today. But you need to understand the real problems I'm having with my period." I've never seen anybody run faster out of the tea rooms."

""You find that when people knock you down, they don’t expect you to get up again. So, when you get up, they have mixed feelings,”"

""God raised other people to help me.""

"". I believe that the God who has seen me through till today will continue to do so until He comes.""

"Nothing gets me. Good or bad. Because I never look back. If you look back, you're going to be in trouble, you will suffer from depression, mental illness – no! Always look forward."

"I don't let the bad things eat me up, oh no. Because I'm not a victim. That's why people say to me, "When I see your smile I feel so happy, when I see your body, your aura, I feel as if I can cope." Because I’m Miss Optimist!"

"When you are black you carry your colour with you everywhere you go."

"I am there to move society on and even though I get obstacles I will overcome them because I am working for good."

"I won. And I'm telling women that they can win."

"It was easy, a few years ago, to think that lesbian poetry didn't exist. It had, of course, always been there-dusty in rare book libraries, lost in love poems with changed or ambiguous pronouns, absent from the published writing of otherwise acceptable women poets. Yet until fairly recently, we didn't know all this. Those of us who are lesbians seemed to have come from nowhere, from a great blankness with only a few shadowy figures to suggest a history. We could find Sappho's poetry, all right, but only when preceded by the (male) assurances that "Neither the gossip of scandalmongers nor the scrupulous research of scholars should cause us to forget that [her reputation as a lesbian] is nothing but speculation." We could surmise about Emily Dickinson's life, but until the fifties we were confronted only with a selected number of her published poems and letters. We could stubbornly claim Gertrude Stein and Amy Lowell and H.D. as lesbians-but they hardly constituted a lesbian literary tradition out of which to write or a history from which lesbians, especially lesbians of color or poor or working class lesbians, could draw strength."

"Lesbian Poetry must be seen as a the tip of an iceberg. The presence in it, for example, of Jean Mollison, a 63-year-old woman from rural New York who has many poems that have previously been seen only by close friends, serves as a crucial reminder of the existence of those lesbians whose work we have not seen, but who might very well have been writing poetry for four decades or more. They too, no less than Sappho and Angelina Weld Grimké and Elsa Gidlow, are a part of the tradition of lesbian poetry. In reading the lesbian poetry in this anthology, we cannot afford to forget the background of silence and denial and oppression out of which a vital, visible lesbian poetry has stubbornly emerged. While this background is important because it is at the same time not very far behind us and still present, the appearance of Lesbian Poetry-like the appearance of other publications by women who clearly identify themselves as lesbians-affirms our diversity, our creativity, our strength, our determination to continue to struggle and survive in a hostile world."

"...I did what I had always done. I held tight to my rational side, going on with business as usual, seeking in reasoned argument some stability for my precariously rocking days. And I pulled myself together to write-to clarify; to argue for complexity; perhaps more than anything, to affirm my intention not to crawl under a rock and be heard from no more. (p16)"

"Isolation. I had nobody to tell, and no language for it anyhow. (p28)"

"The uneasy feeling (for me) of pieces falling into place, recollections demanding in some way to be dealt with. (p43)"

"I'm beginning to understand how my sense of identification with other women is making possible my own writing and recovery. Writing now, I'm struck by the extent to which my risks are inseparable from theirs. For me, the movement out of depression, into some sort of slow healing, has much to do with other women's stories, with what women have told me when I said, "I never told you this, but..." Some have put their stories on paper for their own reasons. But others have been jarred into memory or into talking about what they've already remembered, or what they've yet to recall. (p48)"

"My childhood had sealed off whole rooms where I couldn't look. I’d learned well to brick up how I felt... (p49)"

"Writing pushes me, not to answers, but to questions, criticisms, problems, and possible strategies. It intersects with my activism, makes me look even more closely at the political work I do and why and how I do it. (II. EXTENSIONS)"

"How much easier it is for someone to say simply that she is oppressed-as a woman, a Black, a lesbian, a low-income woman, a Native American, a Jew, an older woman, an Arab-American, a Latina-and not to examine the various forms of privilege which so often co-exist with an individual's oppression. Essential as it is for women to explore our particular oppression, I feel keenly the limitations of stopping there, of not filling in the less comfortable contours of a more complete picture in which we might exist as oppressor, as well as oppressed. (II. EXTENSIONS)"

"Whatever our differences, efforts to address them directly should always be seen as attempts to break down divisions which are encouraged by-and which benefit-the rich white Christian men who run this country. (II. EXTENSIONS)"

"The problem as I-and, I think, a great many other Jewish feminists-see it is to embrace the "We" of our Jewish identities without seeing "They" as totally Other. We strive to acknowledge Jewish identity and Jewish oppression as fundamental components of our lives and histories, individually and collectively, and, at the same time, to use what we know of being Jewish-as of our other identities and oppressions-to understand generations of experience that have some parallels, yet are different from our own. This process is complicated, and the history between non-Jewish people of color and white Jews has not made it less so. (III. THREADS)"

"As Elly Bulkin indicates in a mind-stretching essay, "Hard Ground": "In terms of anti-Semitism and racism, a central problem is how to acknowledge their differences without contributing to the argument that one is important and the other is not, one is worthy of serious attention and the other is not.""

"Many of the most obscure images and turns of phrase in the Rig Veda make sense as poetic realizations of specific ritual activities […] every apparent barbarity in syntax, in word choice, in imagery is deliberate and a demonstration of skill whose motivation I must seek."

"I am not a poet: I can enjoy the talents and artistic sincerity of a Rig Vedic poet, but I cannot emulate it or imagine how it feels to be part of this creative tradition. I am a scholar (though not a theologian), and I can appreciate internally the intellectual effort and acuity employed to make sense of the religious traditions that confronted the scholar of the Bráhmana period. I would hope to have in some measure the same controlled intelligence, the flashes of insight, and the empathy that these ancient scholars brought to bear on the tradition they were trying to explain, and I would also hope that they would appreciate the fact that this tradition remains an absorbing intellectual puzzle to this day."

"The more I read the Rig Veda the harder it becomes for me – and much of the difficulty arises from taking seriously the aberrancies and deviations in the language… One can be blissfully reading the most banal hymn, whose form and message offer no surprises (I have come to cherish such coasting) – and suddenly trip over a verse, to which one’s only response can be ‘What??!!"

"Within its soberly academic trio of hardback volumes, however, seethes an incoherent mix of mumbo-jumbo and misplaced obscenity, most of it apparently meaningless. It reads like a burlesque version, in the style of Hamlet Travestie, of a long lost original... Strangely, though, ‘spoked wheels’ have been introduced twenty-two times into this translation, as a new interpretation of the word aratí. This epithet of the fire god was previously understood to mean ‘servant’ or ‘messenger’... Given the current frantic search for evidence of ‘spoked wheels’ in the remains of the Indus Valley Civilization, the translation could even be considered irresponsible... As Hamlet Travestie slid into Dogg’s Hamlet I found myself wondering: could this be a long-hatched plot by the Pentagon to destroy Hindu fundamentalism at its heart?"

"We were touching a raw nerve. Women in Ireland wanted contraception. I mean, six children on average. Or maybe more."

"It was massive that the crowd agreed with us because it was against the church. You just knew it resonated with women who thought "I needn’t get pregnant"."

"It was never a condom train. We were never going to give control of our sexuality to men."

"Her passion and wrath was not scattergun – it had a laser-like focus on calling out inequality and injustice. She suffered no fools but had a kindness and warmth for many."

"As one of the women who took the train in 1971, she set in train an unstoppable wave for equality and a changing of Ireland for the better. That change has not yet reached its conclusion but it would be nowhere if it wasn't for warriors like Nell. In an Ireland trying to emerge from the shadows and find who it was, Nell McCafferty was one of the people who knew exactly who she was and wasn't afraid to enter every battle for gay and women's rights. We all owe her a great debt for this. Nell McCafferty left Ireland a much better place than she found it and she played her part with spirit and style."

"For a religion that wants to kill people, after eighty years, I will remove my hijab."

"Sattar (my son) wanted a free Iran, eliminating poverty, and happiness of people."

"We have definitely seen marked improvements in the status of women. These improvements are driven by the diligent efforts exerted by women- led movements."

"Egyptian women already have gained the right to travel without their husband’s prior consent, and the right to pass down their nationality to children born to foreign fathers."

"Women’s rights have been secured constitutionally, with many constitutional terms, translated into legal clauses while others remain in the pipes. There are several measurable examples that echo the ongoing progress of women in Egypt by law."

"We still need to change the cultural practices that constitute violence against women and the best way to achieve this is by putting more women on the decision- making level, be it at the governmental or the parliamentary."

"To empower women, we should ensure that all young girls receive their education. The benefits of this education will trickle down not only to their families but nationwide as well."

"There are still women and girls who are denied their right to education even though the government provides free basic education, but some parents deprive their daughters of that right."

"Offering females quality education and putting in place techniques for active life-long learning, while giving them the space to express themselves and air their grievances, as well as access to support removing any obstacles in their way for development, are badly needed."

"You can do it just have self- confidence and work hard. Women are multitaskers. They are soldiers and if they believe in what they are doing they will succeed…so believe in God, build friends and alliances, do not make enemies"

"Women will be fully empowered and gender equality will prevail when we explain to everyone in the society that they stand to benefit."

"My diligent efforts were rewarded when I was decorated with the ‘Order of Good Hope’."

"some people doubt women’s capabilities simply because they are women, so you have to double your efforts to get what you are entitled for."

"There are several measurable examples that echo the ongoing progress of women in Egypt by law: more than 12 years ago Egyptian women already have gained the right to travel without their husband’s prior consent, and the right to pass down their nationality to children born to foreign fathers."

"Ufot Ekaette was exceptionally patriotic to Nigeria’s cause."

"Dame Virginia Ngozi Etiaba born 11 November 1942, was the firstand, up till now, only female governor in Nigeria's political history"

"We should all thank God for Mo. I have never seen a more 60th birthday celebrant. I think she is celebrating her birthday herself. She is so happy and people are so happy for Mo because everybody here wants to dance with and for Mo."

"I am celebrating her not because she celebrated me when I turned 70 but because Mo and her friends, Ruth Osime, Nkiru and others are amazing and jolly good fellows. I am so proud of her and that is why each time I send messages to her , I always end it with I am always proud of you."

"Most of the women here have always struggled and have consistently made it. Mo is an incredibly, unbelievably strong girl. I wonder how she gets her courage, her resilience and I don’t know where she gets her energy from."

"I am approaching 80 and I understand what battle is all about because I have fought so many as a politician for over 32 years. I’m seeing sincere love for a fellow woman. Women are beginning to love and appreciate each other. Women should continue to be happy for each other. If there is anything like reincarnation, I want to come back as a woman."

"You found pictures of maize on the trees to remind people that if you did not vote for Uganda Peoples Congress (UPC), then you wanted to prolong the colonial rule in Uganda."

"First was the deliberate development of the economic arm of the government, Uganda Development Corporation (UDC) to strategically develop agro based industries, to boost agricultural production, to create employment for our people."

"The civil service was very strong and terms and conditions of employment were very favorable. I worked in the licensing department under the Ministry of Commerce, which was chaired by the Jayant Madhvani (the eldest son of Muljibhai Madhvani)"

"UDC actually became the center where young and upcoming managers were developed. We didn’t have human resource well trained in management, but companies were very well managed. There was very minimum corruption."

"Many commercial people wanted favors, to give them import or export licenses but some of us were not easy to bend. We favoured Africans who came up like James Mulwana who was just an ordinary struggling Ugandan. We gave these people favorable licensing terms to encourage them to also come up in business."

"Tell it as it is."

"We are all part of the problem and part of the solution."

"Remember, together we should be able to build a mountain."

"I solemnly pledge to dedicate all my strength to the welfare of the Gabonese people, striving to promote their well-being and shield them from harm, to uphold and protect the constitution and the rule of law, to fulfill my duties with integrity, and to act with fairness towards all."

"Rose Francine Rogombé took the oath of office as interim President of Gabon"

"Women have a new interest in political issues. Of course, women are a little concerned about their new powers. We don’t want to seem aggressive or in competition with men. We want acceptance from men."

"My personal challenge has been to push women in this congress. The president of Tunisia affirmed his commitment to double the number of women in the congress of the Constitutional Democratic Rally. In the recent elections, if there was a list of five to seven candidates, we were obliged to vote for at least one woman."

"We are not a bomb to be defused. We are a dynamic force for progress that no one can stop."

"when a man is elected ,he wants to be in charge ,he doesn't feel the need to move his chair .when a woman enters the political field ,if she is asked to go to the rural villages ,she does it ."

"Why have I not engaged with him? We are not friends; we were comrades who worked together at a particular time"

"I did not protect Zuma] because he was a person I worked with in my political party or that he was perhaps an ANC person"

"It was on the basis of the house rules that I was implementing decisions. I have no regrets"

"When I took a decision at the point at which the Constitutional Court had said it is up to Parliament to decide whether the method of voting on a particular time, in a particular motion against the president whether it should be private or it should be open. And I said it should be open. People were surprised because I was supposedly this stooge of Jacob Zuma"

"We are in a moment where we are reflecting soberly. This is something touched upon on the road, get out of caucus room because South Africa is much bigger than the caucus room"

"Part of the challenge we have is that part of that is actually government property, which was for ensuring that there are health facilities nearby for the president to be able to be looked after"

"We can’t blame the problems of South African society on the ANC. Criminality has been in SA for more than three centuries, especially after the colonialists came and brought crime from Europe to Africa, so you can't say the ANC brought criminality"

"very worried” about the xenophobic attacks and, to rectify the situation, President Cyril Ramaphosa had apologised to Zimbabweans during former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's funeral"

"On the 29th of May, the ANC will win overwhelmingly, and this is a promise we are making. It does not matter who [Zuma] did it or whether his move [MK Party] scared us and confused us."

"Hey! yes my children, if we could go back in time...;Go wild animals, be blessed, despite your difficulties we are together...Go wild animals!"

"Observing recent developments in the country, it seems evident that the government lacks commitment to achieving the Southern African Development Community (SADC) declaration for 30% representation of women."

"Namwala was scheduled to receive its initial shipment of relief food from the Disaster Management and Mitigation Unit within the Vice-President's office in July."

"Zambia's historical narrative has largely been shaped by the perspectives of the nation’s early independence leaders, often sidelining or misrepresenting the roles and contributions of other influential figures."

"The conference, set to host over 60 attendees, will bring together scholars, former freedom fighters, surviving veterans from the independence era, children of freedom fighters, and members of the public. The media will also be invited to participate and cover the event, given their key role in educating and informing the public on topics crucial to the nation’s political history and development."

"The conference will feature a series of presentations over two days, exploring subjects such as the historical contributions of forgotten heroes and heroines, honoring Zambia's early political freedom pioneers, showcasing the impact of lesser-known freedom fighters, analyzing the important role women played in the liberation movement, and examining significant sites and events that served as landmarks in Zambia’s struggle for independence."

"Consequently, many children and grandchildren know little about the contributions made by others in the struggle for political freedom. This conference seeks to spotlight some of these forgotten heroes and heroines, ensuring they receive recognition and secure a rightful place in the country’s political history."

"The disgrace and insults I received for going into politics openly was too much for me. I have learnt my lessons and will not go into politics again. Even if I will go into politics, I will be behind the scenes and not as openly as did in the past."

"Like everyone else, I have my political party but I won’t be seen openly doing politics as I used to do in the past. It won’t ever happen again, trust me."

"It hasn’t been easy but we are managing and looking up to God. Some of the pupils don’t even pay their fees but what can we do? We have always been there for the poor so we manage the situation."

"It has really gone down, though some are still producing, I know Kumawood for instance is still quite active."

"We don’t see the big shots in the industry doing productions and that is rather unfortunate."

"Failure is not in my vocabulary' s"

"I said yes, yes, he has gone to America, and then later she said he has passed on. I mean, my heart almost stopped. I didn't expect him to pass on so fast. I stopped talking."

"The man was here the other day with his wife, they were very happy, they came a second time, we sat for three hours chatting and talking, and now that I hear he is gone, I am very sad. But then, what do you do? You have no choice"

"When he found me in Nyango, I told him I didn't have a bed, I wanted to be in the camps, but I didn't have a bed, He went to buy me a single bed, and he said because I am a single, small woman."

"The way a few of us are from different countries. He was a very good person to work with; he was very consultative, he met with staff frequently, and he made you feel that you were contributing and that you were still part of the struggle, that you were fulfilling the mission for the liberation of Namibia"

"We, members of staff, were able to see the last batch of our students graduating in a free Namibia. Together with their parents, it was quite an emotional moment, especially for their parents.""

"She lived a short, but rich life and believed in human dignity"

"Failure is not in my vocabulary … I wanted to share my story with young women from Namibia, who want to do something but who may think that it is difficult or that it is only for boys or that it will take long. I wanted to encourage them and tell them that all it needs is focus, determination, courage and discipline"

"There are many sad illustrations of the inadequacy of facilities for children with all forms of disabilities. We do not have enough facilities in Gauteng, for example, to cater for children with disabilities and that opens them to all kinds of abuse."

"While the committees have been vigilant in monitoring progress, it is envisaged that the handbook will provide MPs with information and tools that will help keep children, their rights, issues, needs and issues on the front burner inside and outside Parliament."

"legislators would find the handbook useful as they did oversight and that it would enhance their knowledge of children’s rights."

"Despite existing legislation and support services, recent incidents reported in the media of the rape of the most vulnerable children, those with disabilities, had shown that there was still significant room for improvement in applying children’s rights."

"NRA success in women emancipation and empowerment of persons with disabilities ever since 1986”"

"“When the political environment became bad we organized ourselves with common interests and came together for a possible solution."

"“Because of world history where women were treated with different contempt, we decided to create an affirmative action to tackle that belief,” she said, adding that, “Look at our government today and the cabinet itself. It is not the usual cabinet. Women are at the helm of leadership,”"

"“We have so far achieved a lot in terms of democracy and human rights so we need to tighten a bit in order to consolidate this milestone. There are many sectors that are lacking women. It's high time women occupy that vacuum,”"

"“The businessmen, the educated and government leaders especially commissioners should not stick to the standing orders that are rigid and hinder development”. She said adding that, “Sometimes we do not need certain things. Just identify the priorities and what we need that are in the interest of Africa”."

"“The large population is an immediate market. We cannot survive on a small population since we haven't learned how to create the market in the other way. Reducing the population is not a revolutionary thing. Africa is not yet full,”"

"“We are going to ensure that Africa is a free trade zone. We are also going to ensure that these railways connect all our countries. This politics we are preaching will succeed if people have what to eat and that is if Africans are united,”"

"We are seeing people are no longer respecting their leaders. We can't work that way because we have human rights”."

"There is a greater truth than mine, there is a truth of Namibian History… I was there also. This is my story."

"This book is dedicated to the women who made me what I am today. My maternal great grand mother, my Herero and Damara grandmothers Metha Ngatjikare and Christofine Gamamus both of whom lived during the German occupation and gave birth to children whose fathers were German, and who were forced by German and South African occupation to bring up these children on their own. And despite these challenges these children made history in their own right."

"My wonderful mother, Charlotte Schimming, my role model, who taught her daughters to always recognize their own work never to feel inferior to anybody be they white or male."

"And to my father Otto Ferdinand Schimming the greatest gender sensitive man I have ever known whose contribution to the struggle for the liberation of my people remains unwritten."

"I was born on the 2nd of December 1940 (or so we all agreed) until I was twenty years old when we realized that that was the birth date of my late brother Norman who died before I was born and in whose memory was named Nora."

"So I celebrated my 21st birthday on the 1st of December, for the first time. I was the 5th of eight children, four boys and four girls."

"As has been and still is the practice in our black communities, we were not the only ones. My cousins, the sons of my maternal aunts, Mamma Goka and Mamma Grete, as well as the son of my uncle Rudolf, my aunt Huldà Kamboi Ngatjikare and a distant cousin Ismael Tjombe formed part of the nuclear family. Apart from us, my parents brought two young boys, Filemon and Josef to help in the house."

"I grew up in this large family with the good and the bad and yet looking back seventy plus years, the good memories are clear in my mind whereas the bad ones seem to have disappeared into oblivion."

"My mother did not believe in ‘I am the person, I can do that’, she was a very strong willed, active woman, and she wouldn’t accept ‘no’ as an answer, and she wouldn’t just give up, she’ll go as far as she can.”"

"She made it always look as if my father was the boss, but even if it came to petty cash, my mother used to hold the purse"

"I see my task as presenting Namibia as a young democratic African country which, under Your Excellency’s able leadership, is bent on promoting the welfare of all Namibians. I am departing for my new post at a time of great drought in our country. Seeking solutions to and assistance for this dilemma will be my first - albeit not my sole - preoccupation."

"My focus will be on development - promoting investment and increasing trade between Namibia and Germany. Tourism, Comrade President, is another area which promises increased revenue for our country, and it is here that Your Excellency’s Embassy in Germany can play a vital role in bringing more tourists to Namibia"

"It is revolving into a dynamic robust institution for the justice sector"

"The college will further cultivate an existing generation of prosecutors by ensuring they are kept up to date with the latest developments"

"Similarly, the Cyberforensic Academy will focus on the intersection of law and technology, equipping learners with the knowledge and expertise needed to navigate complex issues such as cybercrime, digital forensics, financial crime investigations, and beneficial ownership"

"We trust that the integrity commissioners will aid the organisation in ensuring that its integrity and good standing is upheld‚ so that we may all take heed in the examples of life-long activists and disciplined members of our movement such as those who have been bestowed with the honours of Isithwalandwe/ Seaparankoe like Tata Nelson Mandela"

"I understand that the Portfolio Committee has a good working relationship with both the Department and the Ministry for Justice and Constitutional Development. I hope this spirit of cooperation will continue to prevail as we jointly continue to seek better ways to ensure that our service delivery makes a real impact on the lives of our people"

"I will always fight for a woman's right to choose and the right to privacy. Reproductive issues are medical related issues and they should be kept private between a woman and her doctor."

"As a retired educator I have seen first-hand the impact a great education can have on a young person's life. I will always be a champion for public schools, our teachers, and our children."

"It's time for Congress to act, restore the Voting Rights Act, and take action to prevent voter disenfranchisem ent. As your next Congresswoman, I will stand up to the extremists in the Republican Party to ensure civil rights are protected for everyone."

"We must protect our most precious resource, our environment, for future generations."

"Health insurance needs to be affordable and available for everyone, not just the wealthy. I will always fight to improve the access, level of care, and affordability of health care."

"Since the 2020 election, we've had some big successes, including sending the American Rescue Plan Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to President Biden's desk. These legislative victories are responsible for everything from the Child Tax Credit, to almost a billion dollars in transit funding for North Carolina"

"When the Supreme Court struck down Roe, it took reproductive health care decisions from women. I will continue to fight to ensure women’s rights are restored and protected. I also support legislation that would provide paid family and medical leave benefits, making it easier for women to return to work particularly after the pandemic."

"As a retired educator, I have seen first-hand the impact a great education can have on a young person’s life. I will always be a champion for public schools, our teachers, our children and our Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I want to make sure our HBCUs not only survive but thrive. That’s why in 2019 I sponsored and introduced H.R. 5363, the Fostering Undergraduate Talent by Unlocking Resources for Education (FUTURE) Act that permanently provides funding totaling $255 million a year for all Minority-Serving Institutions, including $85 million for HBCUs."

"Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “of all the forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane.” The United States has the worst maternal health outcomes, including mortality and morbidity, out of all other developed nations. Black women are three to four times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related complication compared to white women. That’s why I co-founded the Black Maternal Health Caucus and why I’m fighting for the Momnibus, a package of 13 bills focused on improving maternal health outcomes and closing the disparity gap."

"I also support a single-payer health care system and have fought for several decades to ensure North Carolina expansion of Medicaid."

"I don’t think there’s any prohibition against anyone working, and I didn’t hire anyone."

"I tried to help with so many different things that would help elevate people in New Orleans and this state. It’s kind of hard to remember one project."

"It was an honor to receive this award recognizing me for Exemplary Leadership and Collaboration from the Kansas Mental Health Coalition for the 2017 -2018 Session of the Kansas legislature"

"Last month I was invited to speak at the Rally for Public Education. I had the opportunity to say that EDUCATION IS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT. Our children deserve a quality education and leaders who are willing to invest in their future."

"Please join me in passing along thoughts and prayers to all the families who begin the weeks of funeral services in Uvalde,Texas.19 students and 2 educators lost their lives in a senseless act of brutal murder in the strongest terms possible."

"Congress has failed to act even after numerous mass shootings, including this year's tragedies in Olathe,Irvine, and Buffalo. This year I reintroduced two pieces of gun safety legislation in February of the 2022 session. HB 2613 wouhavr exempted all Board of Regents Institutions, including the university of Kansas,from concealed carry regulations. HB 2914,a Red flag law , would have allowed judges to issue gun violence restraining orders at the request of concerned family members"

"The legislation was finally added to the Digital Economy Bill (now the Digital Economy Act) by a last-minute Government amendment following a long-running campaign by ALCS and SoA. We work from the basic position that creators should be rewarded for their work. If they are not, then they may decide not to create any more, which would be seriously bad news for the UK economy. It is estimated that our creative industries generate £8 million every single hour and that, by 2018, the annual figure will be £100 billion. Writers are at the very heart of this. Books, film, television, even computer games: where would any of these be without writers?"

"As I said earlier, we believe that writers should be rewarded for their work. PLR is not a huge income stream for most authors: it amounts to 7.82p per loan and is subject to an annual cap of £6,600 per recipient. However, writers will tell you that they find it extremely gratifying to know their books are being read and this provides a source of encouragement for them to continue writing. Writers, illustrators, photographers, translators and editors are also eligible for PLR. The Government has now guaranteed that an annual fund of £6.6 million will be made available for PLR up to 2019."

"With the development of e-books, we have long thought that PLR should be extended to the remote lending of e-books by public libraries. Previously, writers received no recognition at all of the value of their work to the public consumption and enjoyment of literature through e-books. To achieve our aim, it would require legislation. We therefore set about the task of lobbying Government ministers and both Houses of Parliament to persuade them there was a need for the moral rights of writers to be acknowledged in the age of developing technology which had facilitated the remote public lending of e-books."

"The new arrangements will officially take effect from 1 July 2018, and any payments arising from the newly eligible loans will be made in February 2020."

"The great thing is that remote e-book loans will receive the same PLR rate per loan as print titles and audio titles, and the terms for receiving PLR will also remain the same."

"We have been lucky to be supported by so many members of both Houses of Parliament, and Government ministers too. The Rt Hon John Whittingdale MP, former Culture Secretary, and the former Creative Industries Minister, the Rt Hon Ed Vaizey MP, deserve thanks for all their efforts to make this happen. So too does Lord Clement-Jones, who helped to move an earlier amendment in the House of Lords, and has worked tirelessly to help us on this and many other issues of concern to writers; and Baroness Tessa Jowell, who has been a valuable source of advice. Also members of the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, particularly Paul Farrelly MP, and current chair, Damian Collins MP. Kevin Brennan MP also helped tremendously. But it would be remiss of me not to mention especially the late Baroness (Ruth) Rendell, who served as secretary of the All Party Writers Group for many years and was always ready to wade in on our behalf. And finally, Dr Jim Parker, former head of UK PLR and now coordinator of PLR International."

"The All Party Writers Group has 61 members now, across both Houses of Parliament and all political parties, including many published writers. It is an invaluable source of support to enable us to speak up for writers, and ensure they are properly rewarded for their work and that their concerns are brought to the attention of those who can make a difference on their behalf."

"There will always be more work to be done. We are currently turning our attention to unfair contracts for writers and trying to make sure that writers are aware of their rights and how to ensure they are enforced. As the mother-in-law of a successful published writer, I am well aware of the need to campaign on this!"

"As a former minister in the Department of Culture, Media & Sport, I would like the Department to be taken more seriously across government. It tends to be regarded as a small, and relatively inconsequential, government department. Nothing could be further from the truth. It deals with issues that directly affect everyone’s quality of life. The enjoyment of literature and the wider contribution of the creative industries generally is central to that. We will continue to stand up and campaign for that on behalf of the creative industries, but, in particular for the 90,000 writer members of ALCS."

"Janet Anderson is a former MP for Rossendale and Darwen, as well as a former Minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS). She chaired the All Party Parliamentary Writers Group from 2009 – 2010 and is currently assisting ALCS in our lobbying activities."

"You should encourage women to seek medical attention during pregnancy to avoid complications that could lead to the death of the pregnant woman."

"The causes of this high mortality rate in Chad are early pregnancies, closely spaced or late pregnancies or even unwanted pregnancies."

"I have lived in this house for more than 40 years. I have no security officers and being a teacher, my home is open to any good-hearted person"

"While serving as a minister, I didn’t like security officers but was coerced to have one. Still, my officers were usually plain-clothed because I didn’t want to scare people."

"If you can’t hear me, feel free and ask me to repeat. I have a problem with my audibility. I have had this problem for about 10 years. I have been a cancer survivor for 12 years now and this affected my voice"

"I always fear to talk with people for fear of being judged. I used to be a vibrant woman and speak on every forum but after my treatment, I have since failed to restore my once strong voice. I thank God for my miraculous recovery."

"I have the education sector at heart because my parents could not afford much, but they ensured that I studied at the best schools and attained university education. To date, I read a lot because I got a solid foundation for what has become a remarkable career"

"I hear many people still referring to me as Maama UPE and I feel humbled. I traversed every corner of the country encouraging parents to send children to school. I dedicated my teaching career to this program and I believe that I left an indelible mark on both UPE and USE"

"I know UPE graduates who are running serious government projects. Isn’t this good progress?”."

"As a graduate, we are commissioning you to go back to your ministries and give back. Go back and give back. Kenya and Africa are hungry for souls on fire to serve and to serve sincerely and to lead change. You are the change that is well informed about public service."

"You just do not jump into a position because it has been created. You must ensure you did not leave unfinished business behind. Leadership is doing at least 99 percent service to your people, not 50 percent and then you abandon them."

"Before we leap, let us first have a clear sight of the direction we are taking. We need to evaluate the pros and cons in order that we do not isolate our community from the rest of Kenya."

"Between 1980 and 1983,I served as the principal personnel officer in the public service commission and as the chief public personnel officer in the public service commission till 1990.In 1990 I served as the deputy secretary in the public services review commission.later that year I was appointed commissioner for personnel management till 1996"

"Teachers should stop using the excuse of poor pay to abscond or report to work late."

"Any teacher who is uncomfortable with the salary should instead leave the profession and do something else."

"Some teachers are deployed to schools that are fully established as excess yet there are schools that are in hard-to-reach areas which do not have enough teachers."

"Any accounting officer of a local government who does not submit names of teachers and staff should be investigated and disciplined."

"Uganda has AIDS. We call it siliimu. And siliimu is within us and among us. And It is only Philley Bongoley Lutaya that has accepted to show us that it is here. And it is up to us know how to handle it."

"But I hope and trust that you bear with me that for him it is a big thing to carry. He is carrying it for us, for you and me. And for generations to come"

"AIDS is considered a homosexual disease in developed countries, but it is a heterosexual disease in Africa and it affects us all. Everyone knows someone who is infected or has a family member who has died."

"It finds women on their marriage beds, especially rural women."

"The men go to the towns looking for work and when they come home, the women open their loving arms and everything else and they get it from their husbands."

"It is a scourge and in Africa, it is putting the productive and reproductive edge at risk."

"In many societies, women are facing serious social, economic, cultural, moral and religious barriers to access to information on the disease, to protective measures and to medication to slow it development in the event of contamination."

"Moreover, women transmit the virus when giving birth, and so have an especially important role to play in fighting the propagation of AIDS. “It is vital to target women through specific programs."

"Inequalities between the sexes, societies and continents must be eliminated to halt the epidemic’s spread"

"We encourage you to keep building relationships with the relatives of these children"

"You the stakeholders must suggest how to effectively and sustainably drive a national wealth redistribution agenda, which points to high levels of skewedness with resources only vested in the handful few"

"Therefore, I thank the Office of the Governor and the entire team for your prompt actions to ensure that we bring changes to the lives of our people as we fight this war against hunger and poverty"

"I want to call upon each and every one present here, including the food bank street committee, to be poverty foot soldiers who join efforts and hands with the government in rooting out poverty from our homes and nation"

"the gender aspect, the empathy, the motherly love, care and attention, these are the things I will bring to the Maada Bio’s fold."

"the boxes were not taken from where we voted, they were not taken away from the hall and the votes were also counted from where we voted, so you can see that it was transparent, free and fair and each delegate had an opportunity to cast his or her own ballot.”"

"So like being a proponent, the problem we had foreseen that led us to approving the multiple box was because in other elections there were lots of void votes, we had illiterate people whose tickets were taken and voted for them, but it did not happen this time."

"Somebody who has vied for the flag bearer and is called to be the running mate I will accept it, but the decision is left with the flag bearer and the National Executive Council"

"Because some people are not guided particularly the youth, they need to be guided and I will be there to guide them"

"Let me say a few words about Ruth, the inspiration for this initiative and whose life comprised multiple facets. She was an activist, a revolutionary, a woman, a mother, a journalist, a writer and an academic. In addition to these attributes, she espoused and lived a set of values that continue to shape our country today and are deeply embedded in our Constitution and our aspirations. These values include non- racialism and non-sexism, a sense of justice and fairness that puts the interests of the poor and ordinary people ahead of self-interest; the commitment and courage to not only stand for what is right, but also to stand against what is wrong."

"It is Ruth's sense of justice that continues to inspire millions of South Africans today, even as we increasingly live in a world where injustice prevails and material benefit is idolised. Ruth's struggle and our Constitution should inspire all of us to continue the fight for a more just world, where the provision of high quality public education to all children must take the highest priority."

"Ruth fought for a world in which all people, irrespective of race or gender, had equal opportunities, a world where children from both rich and poor families would have access to the best education and the best work opportunities. Despite all of our problems and challenges as a society, we should remain steadfast in our commitment to build a South Africa in which opportunity is shared more equally, where hard work and effort trump the shadow of history."

"Ruth used her education and her enquiring mind, analytical thoroughness and personal courage as tools in the struggle against apartheid and colonialism, and in working for a world committed to fairness, justice and the advancement of people. She read voraciously. She studied all manner of topics. Ruth is credited with writing books on diverse topics ranging from Mozambican migrant workers to Libyan politics."

"Public education of the highest standard for all children is critical for democracy to flourish, and was integral to the liberation struggle, as lack of education is the greatest exclusion there can be. I fully support and endorse the establishment of a trust that funds scholarships to support young women from less advantaged backgrounds who show academic potential. Tonight I would like to add my voice to those of many others in congratulating the young women who have won scholarships to study at this wonderful educational institution. Jeppe Girls High, through the Ruth First Jeppe Trust, has set an example of how communities can come together to provide education for all, not just the privileged few. We need many more of these initiatives so that the ugly shadow of our apartheid history is eliminated from the lives and opportunities of our children."

"There is something about glass that seems so unattainable. It’s so fragile and expensive. There’s also a certain danger level involved that discourages people from accessing it. Many people in this area haven’t experienced glass art to its fullest. We haven’t had an entire glass exhibit in a long time and I feel really honored to have opportunity to co-curate this show."

"To encourage people to look at glass critically in an artistic way. I am hoping that individuals will look into other pieces by theses artists, and other glass artists in general."

"Going to pick up the pieces! Being able to see the studios that these glass artists work in, and just talking with the artists has been so amazing."

"We thought about eye flow and how to keep the viewers eyes moving from piece to piece, yet still allowing them to rest and observe certain pieces. The more sculptural objects are meant to be viewed in the round and are more interactive. A lot of these were meant to be displayed on a wall. To discourage people from interacting with certain fragile pieces we put them towards the edge of the room."

"I’d really like to expand the amount of adult classes we teach here, and hope to do so if there is interest. Aside from that, I’m excited to work with glass this summer in my outside studio. I hope to go on more nature walks, and sketch more in general."

"I came from a large family of 4 sisters and 2 brothers. We lived in Cairo and my father was a civil servant and an actor and my mother was a homemaker. My father believed that the place for women is home to raise children. He did not believe that a girl’s education is important"

"My father had hoped for my brothers to become engineers, but I was the one who did in the end. My mother, having raised 7 kids without any help, was very supportive of me"

"I was the first woman to graduate with a PhD degree from the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of California Berkeley.”"

"The first time I went to the classroom, many students waled out. They thought they were in the wrong class. I wrote the title of the course on the board, and they came back."

"I was lucky to have a very supportive husband who saw our home life as his responsibility just as much as mine."

"The department has now hired many women and fortunately they have had a much easier time than I did, with maternity leave and lots of flexibility in doing research and teaching. I am glad that this happens, and that women are advancing and doing a great job, but I am still disappointed that in this country, we still have a glass ceiling and so few women choose to go into engineering."

"I’m so grateful that Egypt had free high quality public higher education when Ali and I met. If it were not for Ain Shams, I would not have been able to come this far."

"I want to help my nation. I want to help the athletes to appreciate their own potentials. One of the ways to do this is to know themselves and to learn some psychological skills and attributes that will make them excel and enhance their performance."

"When I was young, I wanted to be a great person. I also wanted to avoid things that happened to my parents. There and then, I made up my mind that if I ever get married, I won’t live apart; I won’t quarrel. Whatever is the problem I would stomach it."

"The biography brings to limelight my contributions to my environments and the extension of my service to the National and the International/ World Sporting Organisations and the academic world at the tertiary education level.”"

"I thank God for my upbringing. I grew up with boys. There was a lot of challenges. For you to be acknowledged, you have to work twice as hard as a man and as a foreigner. If you are of an average ability, nobody will notice you among the multitude. You have to shine and surpass all others to be noticed or acknowledged. This was a big drive for my striving for perfection all the time. No half measure. That was what happened in England. In Nigeria, I had to work twice as hard as my men folks to get to where I got today. It had been sheer hard work. I never beg, cringe or scheme for anything. People say I’m proud. I am not proud, but I believe in myself. I don’t depend on people. I knew I have to work hard all the time, and that is the motto of my life. Do your best at all items. And that is what sustains me. I also know that God is on my side at all times."

"Education would become the instrument of my liberation."

"I founded the Sports Psychology Association of Nigeria (SPAN) in June 1985 to coincide with my month of birth, and also to coincide with the foundation of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) which is approximately twenty years older than SPAN. The association was founded as my contribution to sports development."

"In fact ISSP has done a lot in my life."

"Inadequate funding and lack of commitment to library development by the National Universities Commission was responsible for the poor state of libraries in the universities."

"Through 10 per cent of budgetary allocation to each university was meant for library development, government sometimes failed to release such grants"

"At Emmaus, every individual returns meaning to his or her existence whilst living in the Emmaus community, through sharing with others, work, and placing his or her talents at the service of the community."

"This mentality has produced a situation whereby on all continents of the world, the rich always believe they are “better” than the poor."

"The part of Abbé Pierre’s vision of Emmaus that particularly struck a chord with me was the idea that the movement ought to free the poor from the vice of moral and material poverty in whose grip society forces them to live."

"The Emmaus movement offers a new status to each of its members by allowing them to use their talents, energy and time to work others free from poverty’s clutches."

"What does “fighting against poverty” mean ?"

"All those working in development, mobilised through the international community, have been fighting against poverty for decades using an unfortunately linear, top-down approach. This approach involves financing or developing policies, projects and programmes in so-called “poor” countries and communities"

"It must do everything in its power to avoid becoming trapped in classic development strategies which place emphasis on aid, finance, social and economic investments and the top-down approach – strategies championed by those who believe themselves to be experts in the fight against poverty."

"The apparent aim of this paper is to reveal the contribution of archaeology to understanding the social relations of capitalism."

"The burden of this particular study of rural settlement in the Scottish Highlands is to show that archaeology helps to achieve a deeper understanding of the transition from clan ownership to individual ownership during the period of Improvement that heralded the dawn of the new commercial age in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries."

"If ever one wondered whether the life of a single man could illuminate a century, [this] brilliant biography … proves the point.”"

"If France wanted to use francophonie to impose anything on me, an ideology or a way of life or whatever, the French language that I have learned and that I use would allow me to fight against such arrogance."

"The France of fraternity, equality, liberty belongs to me as much as to you'"

"For me, it is an instrument to fight against any form of hegemony, whether political or cultural, and whether it comes from France, America or Russia."

"Our society has failed in its desire to rebuild its freedom, democracy and dignity. The social link between Tunisians themselves has deteriorated."

"It's upsetting when I see these young people who can speak neither Arabic nor French, and who can't read. How can you be a citizen of a free country when you don't have access to culture?"

"How can we trust each other when we no longer trust ourselves, when we have lost our self-esteem? When we will finally make progress on the path of self-realization, this feeling of rejecting France – and others in general – will automatically recede."

"I am particularly motivated to promote the work of Tunisian and North African contemporary artists who live in their countries, and don’t have enough international visibility."

"In an Arabo-Islamic country, it is important that artists remind and highlight the importance of the body in the private, social, and cultural life."

"This recent spectacular growth on the number of art students has certainly boosted the interest for art-related events but not necessarily produced more quality artists on the national and international scene yet"

"That is why today, an intercultural event around the concept of the limits and excesses of the body can give food for thought on our present."

"Inevitably, the admission of women to the rank of exhibitors upsets the patriarchal hegemony of avant-garde creativity and introduces new relationships of power between people in the group."

"It is clear that aspects of the performative are relevant to psychoanalytical theory in general and feminist art historical enquiry in particular."

"This is not to say that fantasy is free of social relations and power, but she argues that its process “orchestrates and shatters relations of power."

"I am not cowardly and I keep my word. I am faithful to myself, ferocious to myself, and indulgent to others. That is I, the man. I love the song of love—that is I, the woman. I consciously create for myself illusions and dreams, that is I the artist … I am much more a man than a woman. The desire to please and to pity alone make me a woman. I hear and I take note … I am neither man nor woman—I am I."

"The discovery of this sarcophagus in its original place in the burial shaft was very exciting because it is the sarcophagus of the owner of the tomb... sometimes the sarcophagus is for a different person of a later period, when the tomb was used in later periods. But this time it is not the case"

"The sarcophagus is inscribed with emblems of deities, including the sky goddess Nut on the lid, covering the chest with opened wings to protect the deceased"

"The scenes still preserved on the walls of the statue room and on blocks buried in the sand depict various rather unusual events, related to Iwrkhy’s military career and foreign relations with neighbouring countries, such as an image of boats unloading Canaanite wine jars"

"Archaeologists believe that further excavation of the sanctuary and shaft will confirm the conclusions they have drawn from preliminary work at the site."

"We are critical on a number of fronts. Looking at it first from an institutional standpoint, when the Malian people rejected the old regime, they wanted the existing set-up to be changed into a democratic one."

"With pleasure. Before the 26 March revolution, there was a general consensus that, in the process of privatisation, the state sector should be managed in a way that benefited the Malian economy. But the reality is that privatisation methods have not changed."

"Naturally, MPs have seen what happened in Niger and elsewhere, but fear is tempered here because officers in Mali's forces have also given a great deal of thought to the effects of military dictatorship."

"Let me put it this way. The military dictatorship went through three different stages. During the first stage, just after the coup on November 19 1968, the junta chose Mao Tse Tung as a model, hammering home the idea that power could be won by force of arms-and it was carried away by the popular acclaim it initially received."

"Improving Women's Participation in Higher Education."

"Our brothers who are legislators are not ready at all to give us the smallest jump seat."

"...by hosting the regional course, the University of hopes to gain renewed influence in the sub-region."

"Mology is the study of insects and other arthropods, including those that cause diseases or spread organisms that infect people or damage crops."

"Insecticide resistance by mosquitoes is a major challenge."

"Several termite species are pests that cause damage to crops and forest products, affect soil productivity and landscape architecture."

"Termites that feed on dead wood, grass, leaf litter and micro epiphytes; termites that consume highly decomposed wood or soil with a high organic content; and termites that feed on soil with a low organic content."

"We have 100 species of termites, belonging to 30 genera and eight subfamilies, and recorded two potentially new species (Amitermes sp. and Eremotermes sp.)."

"The correlation between termite species and soil quality is important in agriculture."

"Only a new government can bring equality for women."

"We must tap this reservoir of intellect to re-energize our workforce and bring much needed skills to our fragile economy."

"This has not been helped by the politicization of the current government’s Diaspora office. Staffed entirely by members of President Koroma’s All-Peoples’ Congress party, it has become a largely partisan operation."

"So it is understandable that many in the Diaspora are uncertain whether to engage more substantially in investment and support for Sierra Leone under its current government, despite their love for their country."

"Other leaders, not least the current president, have offered visionary words but few have the track record of Julius Maada Bio of acting on their pledges."

"And we will ensure that contracts and business dealings by the government are made transparently, allowing for members of the Diaspora to have the confidence they can invest in their country knowing it is a nation led by an administration committed to transparency, equality and fairness."

"Only by opening up civic institutions, government and business to all, and challenging the unwritten rules that exclude so many from political participation, can we ensure lasting change in Sierra Leone."

"Be aware of the importance of culture; be open-minded as a scientist and as a person. Seek independence. Understand how important it is to be a responsible citizen. Be of good heart and be confident."

"Spectroscopy is about analyzing bodies according to the spectrum of light emitted or absorbed by matter. What does that mean? Think of the planets, stars, galaxies, which are beyond our reach. – How is it that man is able to get information about them and photograph them"

"I am grateful for what science has already brought to people's lives. My mother had open-heart surgery, and her life was saved. There are no borders in science, people are equal: scientists are not separated by color, gender, religion, or money"

"In future, nothing should be impossible. I long to build a center for optics and photonics for African research scientists in Tunisia, just like the Trieste center. But I also have wilder dreams – of using science to control the climate, to create rain, make deserts fertile, and to get drinking water cheaply from sea water."

"Light is a set of waves through space. So the “messages” are presented as waves. Each atom has its own way to send its message. This is its “spectra”, its own set of waves. So spectroscopy is the common language of atoms. When you know how to read these waves, you understand the language of atoms and molecules."

"I cannot say that I was born to be a mathematician. I followed a path that led me to mathematics. As I went through the steps, I thought why not continue. Also, I must admit that my father was very demanding and followed me closely. I had faith in what I was doing"

"But there is no talent without work. Until the end, I did not know what I wanted to be. My parents wanted me to opt for medicine. That subject is above my human capacity. I am very emotional."

"I worked as a team with my girl friends and we said to ourselves: "why not do the maths" and we registered in the preparatory class for "Fontenay-aux-Roses"."

"We want to demystify mathematics to make it accessible to as many children as possible. ... Mathematics is at the base of all science and technology, both as a way of thinking and as an instrument of inquiry."

"I hope that in Africa many women are devoted to science (law, physics, chemistry, etc.). If a woman wants, she can do more"

"I grew up in a village of 500 people in Delaware in the 1950s, and attended a segregated elementary school. At an early age I wondered why the black students who lived near my school did not attend it."

"Q. What do you value most about the history profession? A. It seems to me that the profession has avoided the bitter in-fighting over methodology that has wracked other disciplines over the last few decades. I think historians are welcoming of different kinds of methodologies and different topics of study. And I think we pretty much agree among ourselves that we know good history when we see it."

"I have seen first-hand the corrosive effects of the notion that the study of the humanities in general and history in particular is less valuable to undergraduates than the study of science, math, and engineering. In fact, an understanding of history is a critical component of citizenship—for citizens of the United States, and citizens of the world."

"I am distressed that some people believe that enforced ignorance about our country’s past is a virtue. As historians, we aim to provide an accurate view of the past, even if that includes topics that are uncomfortable or upsetting to us now. Any effort to eliminate or ignore certain aspects of history does our students a disservice. The profits wrung from the labor of enslaved peoples helped to make the United States a prosperous nation — or rather, a prosperous nation for a few."

"I worry that the impulses driven by anti-intellectualism and anti-science play such a major part in shaping our political landscape today."

"Q. Who are some of the most overlooked individuals or groups in U.S. history? A. People of modest means. Many of these families were resourceful and resilient. For a variety of reasons, no matter how hard they worked, they found it difficult to own their own land or homes. Their stories are inspiring, and also illuminating, as we are reminded of the vulnerability of certain groups of people, especially people of color, in accumulating assets over the generations. Discrimination in employment, housing, bank loans, education and health care are some of the factors that have affected these families. Many privileged Americans seem oblivious to these facts, and want to believe that merit alone is the deciding factor in whether or not individuals prosper. To a great extent today, we are our zip codes; in other words, where we live helps to determine access to quality public education, health care, and police and fire protection. Impoverished communities and families do not enjoy a “level playing field” in their striving for a better life."

"...Even white abolitionists and other reformers were indifferent to the plight of Black workers who could not find decent jobs. That disconnect — between a rhetoric of equality and a reality of prejudice — characterized not only mid-19th century Boston, but to some extent certainly the history of the United States in general."

"...I still remember those girls and who didn't love math, uh, the way I did. And I mean, oh my gosh, think what they were missing. I know I always felt, you know, solving math problems was a little bit like eating candy. There was something about it. It was so rewarding. It was just such a pleasure to do it. And I thought, oh, once they see this, they're going to enjoy it too."

"...And it was so ridiculous. And this was this thing about this teaching of a class and I've been told that I couldn't teach undergraduates because MIT students didn't believe scientific information spoken by a woman. And so I'd said, well, of course, everyone knows that. I had accepted it as normal because as soon as somebody said it, I realized, of course, it's true. I was able to see that women were so under-respected that students couldn't respect them enough. And so they were afraid to put an important course into the hands of a woman for fear the students would not be able to respect them."

"They [female primates] tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy."

"Her interests included gardening, interior design, music, squash, badminton, bird-gathering, philanthropic activities and reading."

"Maryam Babangida was a phenomenal woman whose impact was felt in Dodan Barracks in Lagos after her husband moved in as head of state in 1985."

"She had to schedule extensive renovations to make the rooms more suited for formal receptions."

"She actively championed the problems facing women. She reached out to other African countries’ First Ladies to stress the important role that they can play in improving their people’s lives."

"She had considerable impact in collaborating with the National Council for Women’s Societies (NCWS), helping to win support for initiatives such as the controversial SFEM (Special Foreign Exchange Market) initiative to cut subsidies and to devalue and repair the currency."

"“She was like a Roman empress on a throne, regal and resplendent in a stone-studded flowing outfit that defied description…” Women responded to her as a role model, and her appeal lasted long after her husband fell from power."

"Despite the criticisms that may have trailed her life, one cannot look away from the fact that Maryam Babangida was not regular. She was the first woman to turn the First Lady seat from ceremonial to active and important."

"Young military officers often had short-lived liaisons, myself included. Despite this, I was fond of Maria, and she grew fond of me. Our relationship felt predestined. At NMTC, I became more aware of her."

"“Maryam wanted to be more than a housewife; she recognized the importance of the home front in our mutual success. Throughout my career, she stood beside me."

"“Observers may find it surprising that a focused woman could also be a devoted wife and mother. For me, her commitment to our family and country was the foundation of her success.”"

"I admired her clarity of mind in knowing the extraordinary demands on senior military officers at that time."

"Fatiha al-Nuri is often remembered as the wife of the late Libyan politician, revolutionary, and political theorist Muammar Gaddafi."

"As a champion of women’s rights and a vocal critic of authoritarian regimes, her contribution to the world of activism cannot be understated."

"Fatiha al-Nuri‘s bravery and resolute commitment to her cause inspire those who fight for justice and equality. Although she passed away in 2011, her message and work resonate with people worldwide."

"Throughout her career, Fatiha al-Nuri remained committed to promoting human rights and democracy in Kuwait and the Middle East."

"Her legacy as a prominent journalist, writer, and political activist is attested to her unwavering dedication to the cause of social justice."

"Fatiha al-Nuri was a trailblazing Kuwaiti journalist and political activist who courageously followed in her parent’s footsteps, both ardent champions of social justice and political change."

"She embarked on her illustrious career in journalism during the early 1980s and soon made a name for herself as an intrepid reporter who fearlessly tackled some of the most sensitive and controversial issues in Kuwaiti society."

"Fatiha al-Nuri had an unwavering commitment to human rights and democracy. She used her platform to call out the government’s shortcomings and give a voice to the disenfranchised."

"Her bravery in the face of danger is an inspiration to us all. She documented the atrocities committed by the invading forces, including torture, rape, and other heinous crimes against the Kuwaiti people, and she tirelessly urged the international community to intervene."

"Her efforts were not in vain, and in 2005, she made history when she became the first woman to hold a seat in the Kuwaiti National Assembly."

"Throughout her career, Fatiha al-Nuri remained a vocal critic of corruption and authoritarianism in the Kuwaiti government, and she fought tirelessly for the rights of all Kuwaiti citizens."

"“I KNEW IT WAS GOING TO BE CHALLENGING. THIS IS A COUNTRY THAT HAS BEEN IN CONFLICT FOR A LONG TIME…”"

"“I remember that I wasn’t terribly convinced [to take on this role]…I had never been to Juba. I had never been to South Sudan. I knew it was going to be challenging. This is a country that has been in conflict for a long time and this is a government in transition,”"

"“By the time I retired from The Hague, I had served as magistrate and judge for a total of 44 years. Some opportunities will knock on your door but not all opportunities. Most opportunities you have to look out for,”"

"Marie Shabaya FORMER JUDGE OF THE HIGH COURT OF KENYA AND PRESIDING JUDGE OF THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT (ICC) AT THE HAGUE| KENYA"

"In her long, outstanding legal career, she established a speciality for Alternative Dispute Resolution mechanisms, namely, Arbitration and Mediation."

"She is a Certified Mediator, International Mediation Institute (IMI), and Accredited Mediator (Centre for Effective Dispute Resolution London)."

"She also established and served as the inaugural Head of the Family Division of the High Court and simplified litigation in Family Law matters."

"Justice Aluoch became a judge at the ICC on March 11, 2009, for a term of nine years. She was assigned to the Trial Division and assumed full-time duty on May 25, 2009."

"She recently served as a Board Member of Mediators Beyond Borders International, the Chair of the Advisory Board of the newly formed Africa-Asia Mediation Association, and Patron of Kisumu Mediation Centre."

"Justice Joyce Aluoch is a recipient of several international and national awards. These include the Presidential honours of Elder of the Burning Spear (EBS), First Class Chief of the Order of the Burning Spear (CBS), and The Trail Blazer Award (2018), for services rendered to Kenya."

"The coroner's position is an important one because it provides leadership to coroners and assistant coroners to over 100 locations throughout New South Wales. It provides many recommendations to help prevent future tragedies. I'm confident Mary Jerram will fulfil the role of State Coroner admirably."

"She became a magistrate in 1994, then made a farm change a few years later, moving to New Zealand to farm sheep and cattle."

"Mary was drawn back to her legal work, returning as a magistrate and then the first woman to be appointed State Coroner in NSW."

"Mary Jerram retired in 2013 and in 2018 she was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) 'For significant service to the law in New South Wales as State Coroner, and as a role model for women in the legal profession.'"

"It is a country invented by colonization. Perhaps this fact makes for extremes, in that there is not the moderating influence of a millennial history. Or maybe it is ‘cyclones’, those visitations that build and build and then wreak havoc, from time to time."

"Strangely, all four portrayals contain both truth and lies. Mauritius is like that. Contradictions and extremes""

"In celebration of International Women’s Day in Cameroon, on 8 May 2011 Judge Arrey was named amongst 50 women who had made an impact in Cameroon and was hailed “as a no-nonsense Judge” by her government."

"Apart from Justice Epuli, other Anglophone Magistrates who were also raised by Paul Biya include Justice Arrey Florence Rita, who becomes technical adviser the MINJUSTICE"

"I came to understand that Mali has such a rich musical culture that is not being exported as well as it should. It felt natural that I should bring my know-how, the experience I’d gained around the world over a twenty-year period to Mali, to create a viable music production platform here."

"When you try to do things well, it’s not perceived as trying to be more rigorous, it’s perceived as being “bossy”"

"I felt the need to utilise my experience, the network and access I had gained in the US, but it had to be done from my own premises. I knew that I had the ability, as a young African woman, to sustain a music management company that would cater to international artists."

"I realised how few of us were able to evolve in the top strata of the industry."

"I knew that I had the ability, as a young African woman, to sustain a music management company that would cater to international artists."

"I was among a first generation of African women researchers who, after independence, have given a voice not only to African issues, but also to women. My encounters in the 1980s, and during the UN Women’s Decades with Women’s Studies and feminist critiques in North American universities as well as feminist organisations from the South have enriched my own analysis on various topics ranging from environmental issues to women’s leadership, from reproductive and sexual rights to the impact of religion and culture on women’s citizenship."

"In my own life, I tenaciously fight prejudices and inculcate feminist principles in my children. I draw my inspiration from the solidarity and company of other feminist sisters and from the key principles of honesty and modesty."

"She was also a vocal community advocate for children's rights and the need to preserve the environment."

"She actively supports numerous youth projects."

"She has been an outspoken advocate for consumer rights and worked tirelessly for the passage of the popular "Do Not Call Registry" law, anti-telephone slamming law, as well as to protect consumers against misleading sweepstakes advertisements and to require businesses to honor gift certificates."

"The Assemblywoman has been steadfast in her commitment to make New York a safer place."

"I know a little about health care policy but it’s really interesting to see how you deal with it at the hospital level, these policies you think of in the abstract and now see the reality."

"Education didn’t get into this shape in one year and it’s not going to get out of it one year."

"Rather than bemoan your fate that you don’t have any additional resources this year, eventually you will, so why don’t you begin with some of the smaller steps and begin to get some buy-in on the ideas so when you have money, instead of spending it stupidly, you have actually thought of a comprehensive plan."

"I got the best of it I got to be there and learn from experienced people."

"Education in its broadest sense—to learn to be a good worker who can move on in life and be a good citizen – that’s the best hope for democracy. The American Dream is open to everybody if you take advantage of education."

"We also said that if, unfortunately, they become pregnant, they should avoid abortion at all costs, because today they are allowed to continue their studies after giving birth. They were also told about the risks they run with abortion. They were advised to abstain. For older girls who cannot abstain, they were told to have protected sex and thus avoid pregnancy, STDs and HIV/AIDS..."

"Today as yesterday, and we hope, tomorrow, Refamp will fight for the advancement of all women in Benin and elsewhere..."

"We have noted that this is unfortunately not yet the case in most of the high schools and middle schools visited and we ask the Ministers of Health and Secondary Education to see what they can do given the existing resources. But we are not calling anyone out. On what grounds would we do so?"

"When you're a woman, you shouldn't enter politics to applaud, nor cook at large gatherings or meetings and the like."

"Women shun politics these days."

"On behalf of the Federation of Dynamic Women of Benin, I solemnly declare my membership and that of the 99 women's groups I lead in the Republican Bloc."

"By welcoming you today, we reaffirm our desire to make your voice heard and to give you all the space you deserve within our party because you constitute a force in the Republic."

"'I had been waiting in Harare for five weeks and had been vetted and grilled. In the end I received a call telling me I should be at State House in half an hour. I arrived at 10am and three hours later His Excellency - "HE" as everyone calls him - received me.'"

"I think he granted me the interview because he feels he is getting old and it's time to put certain things on the record. But he expects to win the election and probably will.'"

"'I needed help in understanding how events in Mugabe's life, including his childhood, had impacted on his internal narrative.' By the time Mugabe was 10, his father had left home and his older brother had died. 'Mugabe has a thin skin and shaky self-image. When rejected or humiliated, he turns to revenge. His relationship with the British government has the intensity of a family feud.'"

"The story of [Zuma's] actions on that fateful night last year is a sad reflection on the former deputy president's morals and code of conduct. Zuma is not fit to lead a country where women's rights are high on the agenda, where the fight against Aids is, or should be, an urgent national priority and where the protection of the weak and vulnerable is the duty of the powerful. South Africa deserves a president who can lead by example. Jacob Zuma has shown he cannot do that."

"It is difficult to reach consensus on a definition of racism, but most people agree that it starts with generalizations. It involves projecting the attributes of an individual onto a group as a whole on the basis of race, with pejorative connotations. Heidi Holland's narrative is a classic example of this kind of racist thinking."

"This kind of racism was rife in the early years of our democracy. It relegated whites to "second class citizens", unable to state a fact if any black person might be offended by it. This warped logic has thankfully diminished somewhat due to many (black and white) South Africans rejecting it for the nonsense that it is."

"I had an excellent conventional grammar school education, where I had a wonderful history teacher. That was very important; it instilled in me from an early age how important teaching was and what a difference it can make."

"It was an incredible learning curve, realising how historians tend to only see what they’re interested in."

"For me, the point of doing history has been about how understanding the past might help us to improve people’s lives in the present. You can see that so clearly in relation to women’s rights or in relation to racial inequality."

"...The national narrative in Britain has been one of liberty, freedom, a freedom loving people, prosperity, peace, no conquests, no violence, no expropriation. A peaceful story from beginning to end. A transformation from barbarism to civilisation, but one that has been done in an extraordinary and English way. Which means recognising trouble when it’s coming and dealing with it before it happens, reforming in time, and therefore the slow march of progress. And that Whig story of English history is still phenomenally powerful."

"Everyone else’s lives have moved on."

"You ever look through a kaleidoscope? That was my mind. My mind looked exactly like a kaleidoscope."

"I always tried to live my life being very good to the people around me, and when I needed that very same quality it was nowhere in sight."

"This kitchen is a testament to my resiliency"

"She often portrayed herself as a victim … and attempted to use past history and mental illness as excuses for her criminal behaviour."

"The reality was that she had a personal score to settle and was willing to stop at nothing to see it through. However, her plans wouldn't turn out quite the way she hoped."

"Yet, despite all her success, Ruthann wasn't completely satisfied. She had what she believed to be much more important work to do and, like always, she went after it with great gusto."

"I think I love theatre better. The worst thing about theatre is that most times you have to go on tours, and I couldn't [go], not with a family growing up. If there was anything being done just in London, I would do it. I like doing theatre, or shows, like sit-coms, in front of an audience. That's not bad."

"Oh, thinking back…A friend of mine was laughing at me the other day. He said, 'Any time they ask you what you've done, you say, …not much…!' Because I can't remember! (Laughs) It's been such a long time and I keep doing different things. The most recent ones, within the last two years, that I've really enjoyed were The League of Gentlemen and Sam's Game with Davina McCall. I did Spaced as well - I liked that one - with Simon [Pegg]."

"You know you're working, so you just do it. It doesn't affect me. I don't think about, 'Ooh, there's blood'. I just get into my character, and I do the lines, and that's it. It's just the situation I'm in."

"It's a pity I didn't take a picture, because I never, ever wear trousers! (Laughs) It's because of my size, you see. I can never buy the right length, so I never bother with trousers. I thought I should have taken a picture in that - the trousers and that hat. I like hats, I do wear hats."

"Well, yes. I just get the storyline. I tune myself to listen to the other actor, and as long as I hear the cue word, I pick it up. Once I know the storyline…In fact, sometimes I find myself saying other actor's lines1 Because once you know the storyline, you just tune yourself to that."

"It was a challenging time, because as women we were doing something that had never been done. But it was an exciting time as well."

"The racism we experienced really burned a flame in my heart that created a passion to help my community. Because of that scholarship, I felt this burden – I was one of the few people who looked like me to get this opportunity, so I owed my community to do well, and it wasn’t acceptable to fail."

"Change happens incrementally, it doesn’t happen overnight. I started the process on so many different issues, and some of it got passed, and some of it is still being worked on."

"I encourage young people to take risks and to follow their hearts, and don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do something you want to do. Just go ahead and try it; if you fail, it’s okay, just keep going forward. So take those risks and follow your heart – and work hard while you’re doing it."

"I always enjoy coming (to CSU). One of the reasons I do is because this university changed my life, and I think it can change yours as well, but you have to be open to allowing change to happen."

"I didn’t just watch (politics evolve).I participated in helping the change happen."

"I want students that come to CSU to value their experience here and everything they encounter on this campus because it’s a unique opportunity. Not everyone is able to come to CSU. It’s a gift and an opportunity that you need to explore to the fullest extent."

"While the constitutions of Western liberal democracies preserve the freedom of new religions, I am not sure whether new religions, including New Age and neo-Paganism, preserve western liberal democracies. In Weimar they did not."

"Those Germans (from Hitler, to Rosenberg, to Himmler, to Heydrich, to Klagges, to Hauer, to Grimm and innumerable others) who became prominent National Socialist ideologues, even though Grimm and other nationalists like him did not become members of the party, were uniformly obsessed with overcoming Christianity and persuading other Germans to do likewise."

"The new religions founded in the pre-Nazi and Nazi years, especially Jakob Hauer’s German Faith Movement, would be a model for how German fascism distilled aspects of religious doctrine into political extremism."

"The source of anti-Semitism lies elsewhere than with religion. It lies in a fundamental human divide between those people who love culture, by which I mean the poetics and politics that grew out of a very specific local condition and history, and those who love civilization, by which I mean the poetic and politics that are rooted in non-specific, universal laws meant to protect civilian, local or foreign. Hauer’s fight against Jewish-Christianity is on this divide. (p. 14)"

"European neo-paganism sees itself as the restorer of all that it claims Christianity removed from European life and thought, that is, human godliness, the seamless unity of religion and science, and the harmony of human beings with the environment. (p. 173)"

"The whole thrust of core Nazi radicals was to overcome what they regarded as an already secularized Christianity and replace it with a faith in the ‘Third Reich’. (p. 149)"

"The Third Reich represented yearning for salvation from despair through the fount of power that had its source in the German people (Volkskraft), not in an otherworldly God. Krieck ended his midsummer night’s talk with a hail to the German Youth, German Volk and Third Reich. (p. 151)"

"There is no dogma, word or scripture. German morality is not rigidly chained to words but changes as reality changes and as the original nature adapts to new conditions. It is a convenient moral relativism that Hauer and his cohorts developed. In the final analysis, it is […] a fighter ethic that negates all moral ties except those with respect to the interests of one’s own Volk. (p. 15)"

"[T]he variant core elements of Goebbels’ religiosity consisted of Christological symbols and Vitalism. (p. 24),"

"Goebbels followed the stations of political ideologization from Catholicism toward freer forms of a Christian view of the world and self (as in liberal theology) and then National-Socialism. (p. 7)"

"It was precisely Hauer’s and other Nazis’ radical liberalism that led them to National Socialism. (p. 20)"

"Liberalism broke the ground enabling the emergence of radicalism. (p. 21)"

"“To decode the patterns of correspondences as if they were symbolic would be like trying to psychoanalyse the window of a tumble dryer”."

"“I am walking the fine line between something that is beautiful and its antithesis.”"

"Butler, Rex; Ferrell, Robyn; Wagstaff, Camilla (8 October 2020). "Pat Brassington: Something beautiful & its antithesis". Art Collector Magazine. Archived from the original on 17 March 2024. Retrieved 12 April 2025."

"Her husband of 36 years, Robert Stiratelli, said that his wife was a very committed advocate of the community."

"It always seemed to me like if there was an event where people needed her support or recognition, she was there. Whether it was Eagle Scout ceremonies, weddings, funerals, speaking at a public event, that was one of her top priorities, to be there."

"I just felt like Ellen and the community were synonymous many times during those years."

"Ellen was passionate about energy and environmental issues. Going back to when we were first married in 1973; she was always looking for a way to move on those issues. It’s what led directly to her entering politics."

"She was a wonderful friend to the Abington School District."

"She spent time here to celebrate our successes, helped us in the House to make sure education was appropriately funded for all students, helped with fundraising, helped set up a scholarship herself. Most important she believed in us, because her daughter went to school here. She was an active participant as a representative and as a parent."

"We did a lot of extra work. We worked at night when everyone had gone home and we would rehearse our scenes"

"We worked very very hard. I was forced into big parts from a very young age, probably sometimes being forced into playing roles that I wasn’t quite ready for but there is nothing like being pushed into something like that to give you maturity as a young actress"

"It’s wonderful because it’s strange, it’s almost with all that pressure gone, social pressure, political pressure gone, it is actually a wonderful relief"

"Yes, but that is not important because one must move the emphasis from yourself to the work"

"Then you are not that afraid because if you are afraid that you won’t be good enough, that is not the question. The question is “What does the work ask of me"

"Do the work honestly and properly and that is all you can do and go out there and share it. That is what we are here for, to share"

"You can’t just grow all the time. You grow incrementally and in steps"

"When I was in charge of it, I traveled all over the country to see the state of the country's women. It was difficult back then to talk about women's rights to women who had no understanding of what it meant, especially in rural areas."

"Equatorial Guinean women welcomed the creation of this department with joy."

"I was a teacher by profession and was the first woman arrested by the dictator Macías on December 5, 1968. I went into exile in Gabon until 1973 and lived as a refugee, teaching Spanish to feed my six children."

"because in my country there are many older people still working, but I'll wait and see what my country's Foreign Ministry tells me. I want to be calm, and the truth is, I haven't asked because I'm very proud."

"because from December 2017 until now in 2020, there hasn't been a single statement that he was involved in that coup d'état; let them prove it. All he did was defend a childhood friend of his and one of his judges who died in a police station. It's his responsibility to do so and find out the truth. If something happens to an embassy employee, my responsibility is to defend and protect him."

"Obiang defends his son, and I defend mine. I believe I am within my rights."

"Probably that I tried to make a difference in people's lives. That's what I came down here to do."

"My husband died at 60. He enjoyed his life. Now it's time for me to enjoy whatever time I have left."

"She was open about her own struggles with alcoholism in her efforts to raise awareness and understanding about substance abuse."

"She supported GLBT equality, crime victims' rights, adoptee rights, substance abuse prevention, sexual harassment awareness, insurance reform, and women's rights."

"Bebko-Jones made public that she is a recovering alcoholic."

"I came into politics out of The Women’s Movement… I have always been motivated by injustice."

"My career has not always followed the conventional path. Today of the diverse mix of jobs and challenges she’s faced throughout her life."

"I have really wrestled with the decision. I hate to leave anything unfinished"

"Along the way, Belcher earned a reputation for a work ethic as ramrod as her posture. When she swept into a room or stepped to a podium, it wasn't her high heels or beehive updo but her riveted focus and assertive command that snapped people to attention."

"The first meeting I had with her I thought, 'Oh my word, this is one intimidating lady. It was that posture of hers for starters, her hairdo, it was her whole demeanor; she took over the room"

"She was a revolutionary. She essentially turned that agency around, and it never went back."

"She didn't intend to be the first woman anything, she was who she was, she saw opportunities and possibilities to get things done."

"Timber was king here, not queen. She was fearless."

"Every time a woman takes that step out and has the courage and fearlessness and commitment to lead, especially when she is the very first … she opens the new door, the new opportunity, for every woman."

"She also listened to her employees — and worked hard to bring in new voices."

"In Belcher, he saw a leader who thrived in the job — and pushed others to, from diverse backgrounds."

"And she was the kind of person, whenever she got a promotion, she always had her hand out backward, pulling up someone else, behind her."

"I lived with her as a teenager, and she told me if you do not learn anything from me I want you to learn empathy for other people."

"She was a special person, a sharing person. Your state is much better for her. It is greener. It is more equitable. Because she worked for that."

"We will send her back, to be in the nature she loved and fought for."

"I don't think do–gooder organizations need to be any less well run than the private sector. Whether people agree or disagree, that at least they feel there is an element of fairness is very important."

"Another insight into the motivation Bellamy feels to help people came from her mother. Bellamy told ABC News in 2004 that her mother believed, If you just cut down in the skin in a human being, just a little bit, no matter who they are, they all look the same."

"Caro was just great, and we were all passionate about her experience and really moved by her speech."

"Carol Bellamy currently devotes her time on global education and protecting the rights of women and children around the world."

"The lecture/event went very well. Students faculty and guests really enjoyed her talk and she challenged each of us to think differently about the world."

"Bellamy's work in the little Guatemalan village would have a profound impact on the budding activist by giving her first–hand experience of global efforts to help children in developing countries lead healthier, better lives."

"She is passionate about her work and is driven to the point that she prefers not to take vacations."

"She has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that she is a principle-centered leader for all times."

"She has taken homeless families into her home. She has assisted in finding homes for the homeless. She has dedicated her entire career to helping provide personal and academic excellence for children"

"She has been a civil rights activist all her life advocating for unions, workers’ rights and teachers and helping to desegregate schools. Fostering an inclusive environment for all who she encounters."

"Mrs. Benson is a passionate Christian woman who cares about and loves people. She believes in the power of love and prayer, and that you do what the Lord requires."

"She is constantly defending, protecting, advocating and fighting for the homeless, hopeless and helpless."

"She pushes established rules to the limit to improve the quality of life for people, especially the most vulnerable in our communities."

"She believes that education is one of the most powerful tools anyone can possess and is a constant proponent for the highest quality education for all."

"Having been involved in Nevada's political forum and a member of the ethics commission, I am well suited to serve Nevada in the oversight of the elections, business governance as well as securities and investments. I look forward to the opportunity to serve Nevada again."

"Nevada faces unique challenges given its rapid growth and an increasingly diverse community. These challenges require dynamic leadership combined with the ability to achieve political consensus to meet the needs of our state. I believe my varied experiences have helped me develop the qualifications necessary to serve as an effective secretary of state."

"It’s just time for somebody else to serve. I’ve always lived my life with I want to leave something when I feel the best about it, and I feel absolutely the best about the Department of Labor right now."

"It kind of took on a life of its own and became the kind of cult thing. They think and believe that I will keep them safe, and I love the little kids and the way they look at it."

"That’s the way government and the private sector ought to work together,"

"In the past it has been difficult for me to go places without being recognized, being in an elevator without being recognized, some of those things are really funny."

"I didn't even know that TikTok existed or what it was."

"Even if I'm no longer there with you, I'll be with you in spirit and they can keep you safe so enjoy the ride."

"Cherie Berry is an icon."

"Next time you take an elevator, make sure to bow down to the Elevator Queen."

"Never forget, no matter how lonely and low you feel in life, Cherie Berry will always, without fail, be there to lift you up when you’re down. That is, as long as there isn’t a fire or power outage."

"Politics is an open-ended opportunity to make life better for others"

"He sure took care of South Philly, but he never fought you fighting for the rights of your community."

"We were arrested for feeding people on the subway"

"It’s been a journey of love"

"I believe that public service is what elected officials are supposed to be about. I know that not everybody sees it that way, some people see it as power, but power is supposed to be about allowing you to share, allowing you to serve others."

"That’s what it’s been for me all of these years. I’ve loved every day of it."

"My time is short and I wanted to make sure to represent my community groups all the way up until the end,"

"Councilmember Blackwell has made a life-long commitment to move her community forward and will always work to foster an end to homelessness, neighborhood blight and poor public education through using the tools of public policy, legislation and public involvement. Her overall vision is to improve her constituents’ quality of life – regardless of race, class, gender, or socio-economic status. She continues to believe that there is a solution to every problem, and that when we work together, everybody wins."

"I am deeply honoured and grateful to have been considered for this award. I have been blown away by the wonderful comments I have received since it was announced. I will continue to strive for excellence and contribute towards the industry’s growth and success."

"What I treasure the most about being a UNA member is its intergenerational engagement, the chance to interact and learn from likeminded individuals, the opportunities for leadership development as well as mentor and being mentored."

"Becoming the organization’s chief executive was not something that I had planned or envisioned as I thought I would go back to practicing environmental law. However, the opportunity came my way and I benefited greatly (and still do!) from the advice and mentoring of long-time leaders"

"I was fortunate to have had access to quality education and opportunities while growing up in Latin America. At an early age, I benefited from living abroad and learning from other cultures. This made me value the important work of the UN in promoting access to quality education for all, particularly for women and girls, and the incredible impact that investment has over time in strengthening communities and lifting them up from poverty."

"Paula Boland is a seasoned professional with a strong background in non-profit management and international relations."

"Her experience in these roles has equipped her with valuable skills in strategic planning, team leadership, and program development."

"Paula has a proven track record of driving organizational growth and fostering partnerships to support important global initiatives."

"Her contributions to the field of international relations have left a lasting impact on those she has worked with."

"A powerful force in the Memphis Political scene has passed."

"Powerful, visionary, committed, friend. These are all words Kathryn Bowers’ loved ones used to describe her, including Lexie Carter."

"I was devastated because I thought she had more time."

"Although she was of a small stature she was a giant in the legislature."

"No one should be measured by the mistakes that they make. But once Bowers got out she got right back into the game."

"A tireless advocate for women, the poor and underserved."

"We have to get out and run with the wolves. We have to join up with Mary Oliver and love the wild swan. But I want you to know that every one of us is absolutely essential."

"For myself, I've come to prefer to work in the shadows and alone."

"I have never had to march alone in this period of pretty crushing sadness over the state of our planet. There are so many of us right on the front line, shoulder to shoulder, right here. This is the moment to believe in ourselves."

"I've also always been warned about the possibility of burnout, of thinking we're so essential that we're going to work ourselves into a frenzy and then burn on down into a useless nub. We've always had to learn to pace ourselves. We have to get out and run with the wolves."

"could still be around. And I am. And for a lifetime, I've been driven to try to respond. I find that the question I'm most frequently asked today is whether I have hope; whether I have hope that our planet can survive. And my answer is: wrong question. It's simply a matter of a job to be done. And I would rather fight than watch, as would you."

"When we contemplate the reality of climate change, it’s clear what’s at risk is not just our little piece of the planet, but the planet itself. That is stretching our stewardship capacity beyond all bounds."

"I was raised and imbued with the doctrine of “stewardship,” a concept that mandated us to pass forward our spot on this planet in as good or better condition than we received it."

"We who are among the fortunate to live here must shoulder the responsibility to protect the last of this unique ecosystem, not just for us, but for the whole country, and for the future; and all this in the face of climate change."

"I am certain we all want some of this openness and wildness still here for our great grandchildren—for them, but as important, for the creatures who live here and whose existence as a species is in our hands. We are the last ones who will have this decision to make: what to protect and what to release."

"Ha! I have no aspiration to be president of the United States."

"It's over speaking to Mic from the floor of the Republican National Convention. As we leave here with the momentum at our backs, we all have to go out there and put our game face on."

"We reject baseless conspiracy theories and disinformation that seek to delegitimize our democratic institutions."

"False claims of widespread voter fraud not only erode public trust in elections but also undermine the credibility of our political system writ large. Instead, we must rely on facts and evidence to inform our discussions about election integrity and hold accountable those who seek to sow discord and division for their own political gain."

"Complaining about the rules every time we come up short, is not a recipe for advancing a conservative agenda."

"There does come a time to pass the torch of leadership, After completing this year in office, I will do just that."

"Furthermore, Jan Brewer has been a strong supporter of environmental conservation. She recognizes the importance of protecting our natural resources and has worked to promote sustainable practices and policies."

"She was very aware of the fact that she was a pioneer."

"Paved the way with humility, grace and intention for her and other women of color."

"Hers was a life of purpose, and I will always be grateful that she walked the halls of the Statehouse before me so I could feel a greater sense of belonging."

"While Bright was many things — devoted teacher, mother of two, advocate for racial equity — serving as a Vermont lawmaker was one of her proudest achievements."

"She loved it. She threw herself into it wholeheartedly. To me, it was probably the pinnacle of her professional life."

"She was actually more of an activist than a politician."

"She didn't think she'd win her first campaign, but her years of community involvement and a catchy slogan (“The Time is Right for Bright”) helped her secure a seat she held for three terms."

"She wasn’t looking to run. She wasn’t looking to be political."

"She chose the path that allowed her to be there and speak on behalf of people who weren’t there. And that made space for me to be much more visible, so that (people of color) could see themselves thriving, not just surviving. And I really thank Louvenia for surviving it, so that others of us could thrive."

"I think getting into politics was just a natural progression of what she was doing and how she was living her life."

"I'm so proud of my mom, yeah. I'm really, really proud of her. I wish I was in a place when I was younger to understand what she was doing at the time. I think if I was a little bit older when she was in politics and doing everything she was, it would have clicked a little bit more."

"Bright made history, and her portrait will make sure her story is shared for centuries to come."

"Once an idea takes hold in my mind, I push forward in that direction. If I encounter resistance, I become even more determined. But really, who would enjoy obstacles? Looking back, those very challenges have been beneficial to me. I’ve learned a lot from them and need to apply those lessons to myself. Above all, I believe a person must be true to their goals."

"On stage, I dedicate myself to living truthfully. Yet, people try to turn their real lives into a performance. Sometimes I think our roles have been reversed, and when I say this, directors laugh and agree, “That’s true.” It all feels so artificial."

"To truly create a character, one must devote their life to it, be courageous, patient, and hardworking—only then can one reach the pinnacle. Take our Jamsranjav, for example. Even when he had a broken arm, he performed in such a way that the audience never noticed. Even when his final moments were being counted, when there was a performance, he got up and went on stage. Watching that from the side was truly astonishing."

"For me, I encourage myself by saying, “Maybe I will have a harder time than this, I need to endure it.” People have already gone through more difficult things in this world than what I am going through. Nothing happens in a person’s life. It is important to think carefully and gain insight from the pain."

"Learn to bear the word. The truth is bitter. It is a whip to the wise, a grudge to the foolish."

"words are sacred"

"Mother, I am gay. I have AIDS." The telephone call that it almost killed him to make. The silence. Then, "Come home to us."

"The old women are gathered in the Longhouse. First, the ritual kissing on the cheeks, the eyes, the lips, the top of the head; that spot where the hair parts in the middle like a wild river through a canyon. (beginning of "Native Origin")"

"It has been two days since they came and took the children away. My body is greatly chilled. All our blankets have been used to bring me warmth. The women keep the fire blazing. The men sit. They talk among themselves. We are frightened by this sudden child-stealing. We signed papers, the agent said. This gave them rights to take our babies. It is good for them, the agent said. It will make them civilized, the agent said. I do not know civilized. (from "A Long Story")"

"Two-Spirit writers are merging the selves that colonialism splits apart."

"Homophobia is the eldest son of racism; they work in concert with each other, whether externally or internally. Native lesbian writing names those twin evils that would cause destruction to us."

"I look on Native women's writing as a gift, a give-away of the truest meaning. Our spirit, our sweat, our tears, our laughter, our love, our anger, our bodies are distilled into words that we bead together to make power. Not power over anything. Power. Power that speaks to hearts as well as to minds."

"I am tired of hearing Virginia Woolf and Emily Dickinson held up as the matriarchs of feminist and/or women's literature. Woolf was a racist, Dickinson was a woman of privilege who never left her house, nor had to deal with issues beyond which white dress to wear on a given day. Race and class have yet to be addressed, or if they are discussed, it is on their terms not ours"

"Oral tradition requires a telling and a listening that is intense, and intentional. Giving, receiving, giving-it makes a complete circle of Indigenous truth. First Nations writing utilizes the power and gift of story, like oral tradition, to convey history, lessons, culture and spirit. And perhaps the overwhelming instinct in our spirit is to love. I would say that Native writing gives the gift of love. And love is a word that is abused and made empty by the dominant culture. In fact, the letters l-o-v-e have become just that, blank cyphers used frivolously to cover up deep places of the spirit."

"Beth Brant gave us Indigenous feminism and Indigenous queer theory even before we had a name for these practices, all wrapped up in the most beautiful storywork."

"Beth saw her writing as an enacting of responsibility-the responsibility to help bring us all to the knowledge of how to live with integrity, as good human beings: in balance, centered in the heart's knowledge, hopeful, not vengeful, not small, but with generosity. Whether she achieved this in her own life to her own satisfaction, I don't know, and it is not mine to say. But in my view, that is where her writing is meant to take us: to ignite the imagination, to provide it with a kind of knowledge about how to care about those who suffer, and about how to walk in one's full posture, in a sacred way, looking at the world with vision."

"Her life was too short, like so many of our people. Colonial poverty and oppression took away some of our best sons and daughters. Beth left early, but she had accomplished so much. She inspired a generation of two-spirited authors who followed her to publication. There would be not have been a Johnny Appleseed without there first being a Beth Brant. There would have been no Connie Fife without Beth Brant. There would be no I Am Woman without Beth Brant. We were feminists when everyone objected. Feminism is a white thing, they said. Beth's response, so is patriarchy, and then she told us about the friendship between Elizabeth Cady Stanton and an Iroquoian woman that sparked the suffragettes - made sense to me."

"Beth had an understanding of the road to freedom, the path to love, and the story we would have to create to get there. The pearls in her stories lie in a shell of words that need only to be opened; read Beth's work and we can all come together, transgendered, heterosexual, homosexual, lesbian, fluid gendered, disabled, and abled, white, and non-white. We do not have to be stuck where corporate colonialism consigned us. There was room for everyone in Beth's heart. We can reach out and resist. The world is ours; we just need to go get it. This was Beth's philosophy."

"Beth Brant is a writer of great depth and brilliant talent."

"For the Native, queer, feminist, literary world: Beth is a home, reminding us that we are not alone in our movements towards liberation."

"not only do I want people to know the history of the underclass, but I want them to go investigate. So, engaging with my work should send you into further investigations into knowledge. So, it’s a stimulus to knowledge search. (2015)"

"…all sorts of things that don’t even look political got mixed up with the 1970s and the new politics. So, that was how, when I came here, how I viewed Mr. Manley and Woodside. Anything that was out of the current order then was now possible. As if Mr. Manley had shattered some sort of glass globe and people could go inside and take what ideas they felt like having. It was really quite revolutionary, if unstructured. (2015)"

"I don’t know that the writers are aware enough of the rural. I mean, there’s nature, they will talk about the blue skies and they’ll talk about the roses, but—my models, which are deeply embedded in the soil, I’m not sure I see anybody else doing that. Because I’m a rural child, I understand these things, I want to understand them. So my metaphors will tend to be coming out of agriculture. (2015)"

"The business of being translated—it’s an honor if people from somewhere else, another language group, another culture, want to hear what you have to say."

"My work belongs to the people who are reading it. That’s how I hold with the work going away: people have the right to put their interpretation and their meaning into it—it is in the public arena."

"…it’s not just a culture, it’s a history that needs to be preserved. There have been so many omissions in our history…that’s one of the things I set out to do: to preserve…[it] might have come from my knowledge of how people’s history gets distorted and stolen."

"Louisiana was part of my larger interest in Africa and diaspora, and the need for blacks of the diaspora, and to a certain extent of Africa, to know each other and to understand that you have to get through it together, for political purposes if nothing else…[it] was an attempt to say, “Look, we’re the same thing.” So it’s not just the preservation, it’s also the preaching"

"People read about these things in something called “history” at school, but it’s not made to relate to your real life. You hear about the slaves, and who wants to be related to the slaves? They’re not people, they’re some creature that you read about. So why would you believe it happened to your people, or anywhere near you? So even if we’re doing all these things, you are not quite sure how much of it is sticking—but it’s worth a try."

"…you can’t assimilate until you are something. Then you have something to give other people. My position is this: the universe, the universal, is beautiful, but if you imagine the world as a set of plates piled on each other, there’s this one that’s a little skewed because of a particular history in the New World: our history, that of the descendants of the slaves, is skewed, and it is at the bottom. And if you don’t settle that one, all the others will fall and crash. So that one has to be settled, has to know itself, so that it can take its place sitting firmly with all the other plates…It will continue to run away from us. People don’t know what it’s like, being snubbed for how you look, always being seen as the sniper or whatever. How can they know, unless we stick up for ourselves and say this is who we are."

"Reading Dr. Erna Brodber’s novel Myal (1988) is a transformative experience that unchains both truths and memories and moves you to explore what she calls the “half that’s not been told”...A paragon of cultural memory, Brodber lives truly, completely and freely as a cultural historian, sociologist, novelist, teacher, community organizer, social activist, caregiver, mother, entrepreneur, healer and chronicler."

"I think that what Erna Brodber is doing is wonderful because she's coming from that extremely spiritual dimension which is so powerful."

"I am just not cut out to run a public company and be answerable to hundreds of faceless shareholders."

"My parents always strove to try to ensure their children would have more than they had. That is really what made them tick."

"My father was from a strong working class background and came from an age where it was believed education was wasted on women. He used to say things like: 'If she was a boy I could understand it'."

"I wanted to demonstrate to my father I was still a good working class girl who would get married and have kids like everyone else. I soon realised it wasn't a very clever thing to have done."

"My mother had a lot to do with bringing up my daughter. I knew that when I left her with my mother she was safe and then I could get on with my career."

"To continue in psychology, I would have had to do educational psychology and you had to teach for a couple of years. The last thing I wanted to do was teach."

"My biggest horror is waking up in the morning and finding that I didn't have anything to do."

"“I always said that I wouldn’t lose a fortune on a football club.”"

"Again, that's a really difficult question to answer. I sat on the board for a couple of seasons and I know how difficult these things are."

"I think they made some very poor decisions. I also think that having realised that they maybe misjudged this, they could have said: 'Actually, we got a couple of things wrong here'. But that's not common in Scottish football, people don't generally hold their hands up and say: 'Oh, we got this wrong'."

"I think there's been so much negativity and it has reached such a height that without an independent review it's not ever going to to go away."

"I've sat on the SPFL board and I've approved a loan for another club. I know that loans can be approved."

"What they were looking for was input and advice from me with my business background to strengthen where they were with their plans. It was absolutely clear to me that their hearts were in the right place. What was required was more of a business perspective."

"As time went on, I definitely bought into the whole concept and became more involved."

"To be honest, being CEO and having that level of involvement in everything going on in the club – being in the thick of things – was what I loved, but the moment was right to step back from that."

"we want to make the club as successful as possible in Europe. That’s a game changer for Hearts and if we consolidate our position in the top three or four clubs in Scotland, that has to be our target."

"If something is wrong, it is wrong and we should all be doing our utmost to correct that wrong."

"To pour more financial hardship on specific clubs, given what we are all going through both now and for the foreseeable future, is both outrageous and shameful. We should be standing together to help clubs to survive and to save jobs."

"I know the passion, I know how much football means but so much of what you see and hear is illogical. The team is having a bad run; it happens to more or less everybody. I just think it’s unpleasant and feel for those in the firing line because if only life was that simple. You can deal with it for so long then it begins to wear you down."

"I’ve been criticised for spending money we didn’t have."

"No, I didn’t do that; I spent money I knew we had. Maybe we shouldn’t go into the discussion about whether I’ve always spent it wisely."

"This is an almost unique case of how a can be endangered by trade without specific demand. It was literally unknown in until only five years ago. There was always a local trade, within the and islands, the only places where it occurs. These islands form a chain from northern to in the Philippines. Then suddenly, hundreds of birds were captured and exported. In 1992 about 1,000 were captured, at least 700 of which were exported. In that year, at least 200 died from disease and neglect at the premises of one dealer in Jakarta. I saw dozens crowded together in the cages of a dealer in Singapore. This would have been appalling whatever the species."

"Parrots were not designed to live in houses. They are noisy and destructive and suffer probably more than any other animal when kept in an unstimulating environment. They need constant interaction, either with a human or another parrot, to keep them happy and healthy. Keeping a parrot is so much more demanding than keeping a dog or cat. Alas, the fact that many owners have failed, and failed miserably, is evidenced in the growing number of parrot refuges. They are filled with feather-plucked or phobic parrots whose former owners had no idea of their emotional needs."

"Parent-rearing keeps the pairs occupied for weeks or months, according to the species. They need the occupation. Rearing reduces the monotony of the days and weeks and years which have little to distinguish them. Boredom and lack of stimulation is a very real problem for the more intelligent species. Many s enjoy family life and most "owners" obtain a lot of enjoyment from seeing family groups in an . (And I do mean an aviary and not a little suspended cage where close confinement can result in aggressive encounters.)"

"... Colombia has one of the highest, if not the highest, number of bird species within its shores of any country worldwide: currently believed to be 1,875 (Compare that with just over 300 species found in the UK!). This high number is attributable to its unique location and to its . It is the only country in that has an Atlantic and a Pacific coast and it is also unique in stretching from to the . Three mountain ranges of the magnificent occupy the western part of the country; in the east the habitats vary from lush and flat s to sandy desert. Given this variety of s, it is not surprising that Colombia has the second or third highest number of parrot species worldwide, a total of 52. This is exceeded by Brazil with about 72 species and possibly by Australia with 52 or 53 species. (These numbers could be revised at any time as DNA research often indicates that a particular species is, in fact, two species.) There is a sad statistic connected with Colombia's 50 plus parrot species: at least 12 are in imminent danger of extinction."

"I can't emphasize enough how important parent-rearing is, because by hand-rearing we are denying s their birthright unless it is possible to wean them with ... other birds of their own species."

"Definitely the Fourth Plinth project in Trafalgar Square. I was determined to fill that empty plinth! It took five years of campaigning with my committee at the Royal Society of Arts, but we did it."

"My restaurant in the Seventies and Eighties was the place to be. I’ve cooked for most of the Royals, Elton John, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Alec Guinness… the list goes on. They all loved my food – at least, I hope they did!"

"while cooking for 300 at Vintners Hall, I mistakenly thawed beetroot puree instead of raspberry for the vanilla ice cream. I added sugar and lemon juice, used it anyway, and guess what? Nobody noticed!"

"Every school child should learn 10 basics: Shepherd’s Pie, Spag Bol, Pizza, Curry, Salad Nicoise, Omelette, Quiche, Ratatouille, Trifle, and Apple Pie. These recipes will make you a hit at uni and set you up for life!"

"Our first job was to deal with the concrete. The previous tenant farmer couldn’t make money out of his farm"

"If you’ve had a quarrel, a walk in the garden calms things down"

"I have stood on a mountain of no's for one yes"

"I used to make calls to magazines all the time. I wasn’t discovered. I made them discover me,”"

"Martha Stewart has presented herself doing the things domestics and African Americans have done for years...We were always expected to redo the chairs and use everything in the garden. This is the legacy that I was left. Martha just got there first"

"I’m still myself. I just can’t remember things as well as I once did"

"I've been working 19-hour days ever since"

"I've been briefing Gordon Brown non-stop, he is very involved."

"We are looking at all the water treatment centres and electricity sub-stations. Then we have our waste folk - there will be a lot of gunge left"

"It dumped so much in such a short space of time - one town had six months' rain in six hours. That kind of thing is unpredictable up to the minute it happens."

"It might be better if we just built a bloody great flood defence for Upton but they don't want that because it would wreck the middle of a pretty village"

"They don't just lose their furniture, they lose their peace of mind. This has been like a mass burglary. The scale is huge and not having water is not good. We are going to start getting very smelly soon, this water is horrible."

"We have been pressing the idea of sustainable urban drainage for over 10 years. Because of the heavy, intense downpours and the fact there is more concrete, it overtops the systems very rapidly."

"When I was looking at what I was going to say during this debate, I was very worried because, when talking about climate and biodiversity decline, you can begin to sound like Private Frazer from “Dad’s Army”—“We’re doomed!”"

"We will have to change our current ways of doing things, of course, where too many developments threaten or destroy some of the most precious habitats for the storage of carbon and the support of biodiversity—vital carbon sinks such as, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said"

"The Role of Gender-Responsive Organizations in Global Science," explaining the concept and expanding on it. Being gender-responsive, she said, means creating an environment that promotes an inclusive approach, recognizing the needs of both women and men."

"There are still many unconscious biases that prevent building a workplace where everybody is appreciated, respected and treated equally. Unfortunately."

"We tend to think that numerical gender parity is a good achievement in itself and that increasing the number of women fellows within institutes and academies is a valuable milestone," Diab said in her presentation."

"She continued, “However, gender transformation involves far more than achieving gender parity. It is a shift from a focus on statistics to a deeper dimension that embraces an understanding of the needs and aspirations of all people, especially women."

"Addressing only the notion of parity in numbers is not enough. We need to take bolder steps,"

"Institutions and academies worldwide should give more visibility to women scientists."

"TWAS has great potential to play a powerful gender-transformative role and to influence norms and practices in science academies across the developing world. TWAS draws its fellows, prize winners and attendees at events from multiple countries and also has five regional partners through which it can play an influential role.” And finally"

"Achieving gender transformation requires the engagement of both men and women. It's not only a men's or women's responsibility: we can travel this journey together"

"It was surreal watching the movie"

"Someone actually got what went on and how I felt"

"As the first African American female graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Engineering in 1961, I did not have a role model,” she writes in part. “I understand that requests are not few, and her contacts must be very limited. If there is a way that a meeting can be arranged or a sighting, I am very interested. … Knowing of her has been an inspiration to me."

"I could do a split, but another African American girl could do a flip,” she remembers. “There could only be one African American cheerleader, and I couldn’t do a flip, so that was that."

"Girls always come up here, but they never finish, and you won’t finish either.” Then he glanced at her hands and added: “Besides, you’re never going to be able to draw with those fingernails.”"

"Some of it may have been racial prejudice,” she says, “but they didn’t even have to get to racial because being a girl in engineering, being female, was enough"

"There’s always been magic in complex math calculations,” she says. “I used to think about problems all day long. Sometimes I solved the problems in my sleep. But then I would wake up and couldn’t think of what I did. So I trained myself to write down the solution immediately"

"Ultimately,” he adds, “if we are to maximize human potential, having a safe, welcoming environment is absolutely vital for knowledge generation and for learning. I’m certainly committed to making sure that the Swanson School and the University of Pittsburgh are the best places for individuals to come and do their best work"

"I didn't know they lay of the land," quips Bozeman. They wanted her to go back to school to finish her Ph.D. She just looked at them thinking, I have a husband and two small children, how am I going to go back to Vanderbilt four hours away?"

"My mother only finished the 12th grade but she was always excited about math."

"My math teacher, Mr. Frank Holly, would not let me stop doing math."

"That was the one course that didn't come easily, let's put it that way."

"I don't know how much I helped but he gave me credit on the paper. That was a boost to my ego and really got me going in math."

"Male faculty tend to be less sensitive to the ways in which women treat their studies."

"Women make a B on an exam and they are crushed, they think it's terrible. Men make a B and they think it's great."

"I grew up on a small farm in Camp Hill, Alabama, with my four siblings. My elementary school education took place in a one-room school house in my community. Although my love of mathematics was passed down from my mother, both of my parents instilled in me a love of learning and a concern for the education of others."

"I am very proud of all the students that I have taught, supervised in research or summer programs, or mentored over my 35-plus years as a faculty member at Spelman College, a place that supported me through enough different roles and opportunities that I enjoyed going to work every day."

"Global Learning – is that the field becomes increasingly more than just knowledge, but it becomes a field that is about what you do with that knowledge."

"Wow! That’s fantastic – I am absolutely thrilled. I look forward to working with the new executive board and, of course, with our fabulous staff in Trieste and to engaging with as many members as I can."

"The use of every modern tool that can improve both productivity and nutrient value. If that involves genetically modified crops, indigenous knowledge, artificial intelligence, better use of grey water – no matter – go for what works best."

"When I was a young woman starting out in science I made a conscious decision not to have children as, in those days (1970s), that was the only way for me to realize my full academic potential. I don’t want other women to have to make that decision."

"Africa needs improved seeds. As climate change dries out its soil and struggling plants become ever more susceptible to pests and disease, we need new technologies to deal with these problems."

"African farmers already suffer from drought, disease, internal trade barriers, corruption and lack of property rights; refusing them the benefits of genetically modified food is a cruel and nasty trick."

"If you do things well, do them better. Be daring, be first, be different, be just."

"Business itself is now the most powerful force for change in the world today, richer and faster by far than most governments."

"In a way, campaigning with The Hepatitis C Trust is business as usual. I've always felt that activism is my rent for living on this planet."

"I’m talking about the whole social justice system because it's not just the perpetrators. It is the victims, their families, everybody around them. So, this whole matter of bringing justice to victims has many dimensions."

"I consider myself to be an "Environmentalist for Nuclear Science--despite a lot of concerns and criticism because many benefits for mankind arise from the use of nuclear applications, specifically in health, food, agriculture and environmental protection."

"You are your brother’s keeper. You are responsible. You’re blessed to have what you have, and you’re responsible to take care of others, as God has taken care of you."

"We took care of the land. We captured water in a cistern and used a pump from the well. Nothing was thrown away. You had to use everything because there was little or no money. This meant that we practiced canning, composting, and reusing whatever we could"

"Mom wouldn’t allow pesticides in her garden. Being a Brownie and a Girl Scout, we were taught about preventing forest fires, how to protect the environment, take care of animals, etc."

"Going to college, having a scholarship, never knowing where the money was coming from, but trusting, feeling blessed, and knowing it will come was a blessing. It came from God"

"I had planned to be a pediatrician, then I read Silent Spring and this changed my direction away from medicine and towards chemistry"

"We need a do it yourself approach for sustainable practices. I recall the sanitation strike of 1968 in Memphis, TN. The city came together and demanded change. It is essential to organize and use your community, church, and creative influence to prevail. You have a direct influence on solving our world’s problems."

"My degree put science, engineering, and chemistry all together. This brought me closer to the environment because we have the obligation to take care of mother earth. I have a responsibility to protect her"

"My inspiration to write poetry is my way of trying to make sense of the human condition and the circumstances in and around me in a succinct and powerful way."

"I never felt a poet’s presence as a child I suppose, but I did always have a great affinity to songwriting which I would argue is some of the best poetry if done with fervor and soul."

"Motivation is iffy because we are not usually able to turn it on when we want, so I mostly prefer the mundane act of being motivated by everyday life and everyday ups and downs."

"You don’t just become a writer, although honing is indeed part of the process, you just have to commit yourself to it like you would a marriage. Till death do you part."

"This will be a long list of cheerleaders! I’ve been supported and guided by so many awesome women, many of whom have been pivotal to my decision-making and growth plans over the years. In"

"We placed a huge focus on ecommerce and digital marketing, both financially and strategically. This is our fastest growing revenue stream for the business and we are able to see a justified return on marketing spend and activity making it a really interesting and important part of our future growth."

"Bravery, ambition, empowerment, nurturing, passion, drive, optimism, joy, collaboration, vision, celebration, encouragement, pioneering, and kindness."

"Without the test of heat, no metal proves its strength; without the test of life, no love can prove its worth. Rare is the love that survives the tests of the life she knew, but the pain from loves that failed those tests could fill more than one lifetime.”"

"It seems as though I was always writing something – little stories, poems. All through school, whenever there was a choice between a written or oral assignment, I always chose the written. Later, writing became affordable therapy. I taught in the public school system for 25 years, as closeted a profession as there is, except possibly the religious sector. Expressing and exploring who I was as an individual, as a whole person, had to be done secretly and during those times when I wasn’t teaching, coaching, or losing my mind. It is the need to express beliefs and thoughts and feelings that had been suppressed for so long."

"For me, a story must be relatable and believable. As a writer, I want to immerse the reader in the lives of my characters, in hopes and dreams that may be lofty but reachable, and in struggles that are realistic and frustrating, and even frightening. If I can do that, the reader will be able to live the story with my characters."

"I have a great amount of respect and admiration for a number of authors. It’s difficult to single out one as a favorite. Each offers me something special, unique to their style and presentation. Alice Walker offers introspection and a raw, yet palatable honesty. Harper Lee gave us an unrivaled one-time shot to the gut challenge to our humanity. Sarah Waters masterfully weaves her fictitious characters through places and time in history. And, I have yet to find an author whose craft is more impeccable, or plotting more effective, than Val McDermid."

"I have written 9 books. Each has something that makes it special to me. The first, Legacy of Love, for the obvious reason. Love in the Balance has an emotional connection to my mother, and to a hate crime that was committed near where I live. Mirrors emerged from my teaching experiences, and losing a student on my watch. Losses in my personal life, and an unexpected connection with the daughter of the hate crimes victims, made The Indelible Heart a difficult and unforgettable effort."

"Most surprising, I think, was the depth of my sense of injustice. At times it bordered on anger, and it was such a cleansing, therapeutic experience to be able to express and explore that through my characters."

"My biggest writing challenge is embracing the freedom that I have now from page and word restrictions. My first few books were published by Naiad Press, and were subject to restrictions. I learned to make every word count, minimalize description, and move quickly from scene to scene, all of which improved my craft. But, now I can expand the scope of my story lines without fear of drastic cuts."

"The character created most closely from my personal experiences is Jean Carson, the teacher in Mirrors. Her struggles were mine, her hopes and fears were mine. She struggled to protect her job, while trying to help a bullied student. I kept my job, but lost a student to suicide."

"The hate crimes described in Love in the Balance are based on the hate crime murders of Susan Pittmann and Christine Puckett, committed in Huron Township in Michigan. I was honored to have their daughter, Cynthia Pittmann, write the poignant Foreword for the sequel, The Indelible Heart."

"One of the reoccurring challenges I incur is that my stories don’t fit neatly into one category – there is too much social commentary for the romance genre and too much romance for general fiction. It makes marketing a challenge, as well as award nominations."

"Within the circle of friends, Kasey and Connie have the most stable relationship. My hope is to leave the reader with the sense that this couple has the tools to work through the challenges that long term relationships face."

"As have so many LGBT people, I formed a family of choice throughout the years – people who accepted and nurtured and loved me for who I am. During the writing of The Indelible Heart, I lost three of those people. There wasn’t enough time for me to recover from the grief of one loss before I was faced with another. The once solid ground beneath me was gone. And, at the same time that I was trying to get through my own grief, I was having to take Sharon back to hers. It has made this the most difficult book for me to write."

"That’s the dilemma the group of friends in The Indelible Heart had to face. And, as in our larger society, their opinions ran the gamut from indifference to merciful release to let him rot in hell. As I wrote, I found myself weighing and evaluating my own belief. As it turns out, I find myself leaning closer to Sharon’s ‘let him rot’ opinion, with a gentle nudge to force justice to take the hand of forgiveness."

"That balance has been a real struggle for me. And, balance truly is the key, I believe. It’s a fluid thing, something that changes as our lives change. There were times when I could expend time and energy on marches and rallies and petitions, and there were times when I needed to secure my personal place in the world. The truth, I’ve realized, is that it takes a community, recognizing its fluidity and maintaining its focus. It takes leaders. It takes everyone doing what they can. For me, for now, it means writing stories of palatable consciousness."

"I believe there are a number of similarities, common struggles to change social attitude. But, unlike the racial struggle, the LGBT community, for the most part, has had the option of the closet – to stay hidden, to live the lie. And, I think in the long run, that has lengthened our struggle. Without that option, we would have had to fight harder and sooner."

"My next book will be a prequel to Under the Witness Tree. I never say never, but I don’t foresee featuring these three characters again."

"What is unfortunate is that our community is still embattled, facing ongoing challenges to our rights and security. I would think that as long as those exist, there will be a need and opportunity for me to write stories of how those struggles effect our lives."

"I have a couple of things niggling my mind. One, partly fueled by the importance of the women’s vote in the recent election, is to explore the history of our fight for the vote. Another is the problem of animal neglect and overwhelmed animal shelters. Of course, these issues will have to explored by characters in a storyline that balances love, hope, and social consciousness. I just can’t seem to help it."

"As I said, my next project is a prequel to Under the Witness Tree. I fell in love with Nessie Tinker. Nessie was a 90+ year old black supporting character who challenged me to know more about her and where she came from. I wanted to know what her life would have been like growing up in Georgia in the 1900’s. What were her dreams and hopes, her disappointments? And, what of love, between two young women, one black and one white? This next book is the result of that curiosity and search."

"The women of Kenya have made Kenya proud through our athletes, the late Wangari Maathai, and the rest. I am so overjoyed because the women have done it."

"One cannot go through life without facing obstacles of various types. We have to remain focused, barrel over the obstacles, see the light at the end of the tunnel, and by the Grace of God, keep moving."

"I am proud of the fact that I deemed it essential to teach patients about their medical condition, encourage them to ask questions, and to read. I am proud of the knowledge I have been able to impart to physicians around the country through lectures on gastrointestinal diseases."

"It costs less than getting your hair done three times a year. And if you don't have the surgery, then you're asking to die."

"If you see a problem and don’t seek a solution, you have no right to complain,"

"My entire breast was removed in a modified radical mastectomy, and I didn’t bother with reconstructive surgery,"

"Prosthesis products are widely available in terms of being able to dress fashionably. I have one for swimming, one for strapless dresses, and regular bras for other wear."

"Do not allow your mind to be imprisoned by majority thinking. Remember that the limits of science are not the limits of imagination."

"To me, it was home and a place of happy memories, and I grew up believing I was rich."

"Although I chose a path in cornea and cataract surgery for my specialization, I could not help but be impacted by my observations of the prevalence of blindness among African Americans"

"Eyesight is a basic human right"

"I wasn’t seeking to be first. I was just doing my thing, and I wanted to serve humanity along the way—to give the gift of sight."

"“Philosophically, I like to think that my greatest accomplishment has to be those moments when I’ve helped someone regain eyesight, when I remove the patient’s patch and he starts with the big E and goes all the way down to the 20/20 line.”"

"“Service to the underserved was a natural evolution of my life from my Harlem roots,”"

"“When I was offered an office not equivalent to that of my male colleagues, I could’ve started marching. But I felt it was more important to focus on the prize.”"

""Hater-ation, segregation, racism, that’s the noise — you have to ignore that and keep your eyes focused on the"

"My parents believed that with enough education, I could own the world,"

"When I began my residency training at New York University, I had no idea that I was the first and only African-Americans ophthalmology resident. I did not know, or even care! But I did know that my superior grades, scores and credentials had earned me a coveted spot in a highly competitive residency, and that was awesome. I was happy and excited that I was about to capture my dream and become a great ophthalmologist by training in one of the most prestigious programs in the USA."

"The biggest challenge I overcame in my career was wanting to do research, but not having the funding or a lab to do it in. When I encountered discrimination, I stayed focused on my goal and worked to outsmart the racism I faced – with ingenuity, rather than wasting my time and energy complaining about it."

"I hope that through my past legacy and future advocacy, that the current and future generations of young scientists will not experience the hurtful wounds of discrimination of any kind."

"Taking the high road may be arduous and long, but it will lead to justice and triumph."

"I’ve achieved so much in my career, and it’s important to me that I pass on the torch and help to inspire others to get involved in science, technology, engineering and medicine (STEM) – whatever their backgrounds or circumstances."

"Being poor shouldn’t hold you back either – when I talk to disadvantaged school kids about poverty, I tell them that the label of “poor” is a tactical assault of naming and shaming."

"Although we are making little progress with the little or no facilities at our disposal, we strongly believe that given the right tools we will certainly perform better."

"It is the desire of this research group to fast track development through human and infrastructural capacity building, consequently reducing the gap between the developed and the emerging economies."

"In my mind, I need to represent and not necessarily be loud as in yelling, but loud in my excitement, loud in my demeanor."

"It gives me great pleasure to be here today with my most esteemed brethren from far and near. I have not seen many of you for some time now. So, this event, being the first, calls for many more. It is my fervent belief that we can live up to that pledge."

"Let me take a few minutes to stress why we are here in offering this heartfelt goodwill message. Ndi banyi, taa bug boo. We have come a long way since the days of the Missionaries. Nsukka boasted of many scholars and philanthropists that emerged during that era. Fast forward; we have fought a civil war, rebuilt Nigeria and the University of Nigeria remains in our back-yard. When we take stock, we cannot say we didn’t do okay. But in the grand scheme of things, more could be done."

"Let us look within ourselves and utilize especially the potentials within our youth. They graduate in hundreds every year. We must figure out a way to become reliant on them. My hope and wish is that we find ways to develop incubator-centers where young graduates from all schools can spend time and serve our people."

"Life is a choice"

"I was a miserable newly wed and often pondered about where I should be travelling to, wondering what I was doing on a farm. I decided to burn my diaries of my time as Miss World, because I did not want to live in the past anymore"

"One of my fondest memories was in Austria. I was called out to the balcony of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. The full moon shone over the trees in the vast garden and a white carriage appeared. Ballerinas stepped out of the carriage and performed a magnificent ballet in the garden"

"What really brought me down to earth, was when I lost my first child"

"I remember sewing nighties for them when they were small and later washing and drying the army uniforms when the boys came home for the weekend. I still see myself hanging those uniforms over heaters to dry"

"It was incredibly stressful, because I was always terrified that I would forget what I wanted to say"

"I am a gatherer. If I like someone, I invite them to my home"

"Life has changed enormously over the past 11 years. There are times when we get depressed. We have to just come to terms with it"

"There was a collision on the field resulting in his horse stumbling and then falling on top of him. Nicholas sustained a brain stem injury and while he can hear and understand everything and his brain is fully functional, communication is difficult"

"I didn’t intend to be a weaver; it began as a tenuous thread, but it became my lifeline. It didn’t lead to a concise understanding of the world or even of the nature of weaving itself, but unfolded into ever-evolving questions about the mechanism of the process, what it has been, can be, and what could I make of it."

"I’ve tried to live a holistic life, honoring my general curiosity, acknowledging the wonderful diversity of human societies while noting the similarities of our species. I didn’t intend to be a weaver; it began as a tenuous thread, but it became my lifeline. It didn’t lead to a concise understanding of the world or even of the nature of weaving itself, but unfolded into ever-evolving questions about the mechanism of the process, what it has been, can be, and what could I make of it."

"References to weaving abound in literature throughout human history. The process of weaving takes hundreds of individual threads, and combines them into a cohesive plane. It is the perfect metaphor for how we build our lives from multiple identities and interests into a singular personality. It is also a good metaphor for interconnectedness of any sort—family, community, governance. Weaving doesn’t always yield narratives, but in my work, the resulting combination of images and words reveal a propensity towards storytelling. Rooted in the physical making of the work, I honor the skill that has developed in my hands from years of weaving; and I listen for the insights that arise from my hands to my head, and vice versa."

"Almost from the start, I tried to map my mental activities in a series of woven collages. Just as thoughts loop, certain imagery is found again and again—my handwritten calculations for converting images into physical threads, repetitive counting, diagrams, and glimpses of nature are some of the phenomena that fill my head and these canvases. Over the years my work has seesawed between identifiable narratives and abstract imagery; my quest to understand spiritual systems has entered the weavings in recognized and abstract symbols; and I never shied away from beauty."

"I consider all work as studies, just one step on the path from here to there—and who knows where there is going to end up being. However, with time, the nature of weaving itself became more prominent in my work. So you find notations about how they are made, diagrams of weave drafts, and recordings of their materials. This also became helpful in my teaching. Instead of looking for written notes on the work, I could just refer to the work itself."

"Weaving has been the thread that has held my life together for more than fifty years. One has to fill the minutes, hours, days and years that are given to you with something, and it seems that weaving chose me. In essence, I see my life as the latest iteration in the long line of weavers that stretch back beyond recorded history. I feel blessed to be in this lineage."

"To believe in yourself and know who you are when others don't believe in you is the greatest accomplishment; to never give up, to never quit, to have faith and stand your ground. Never change who you are. Love yourself because you have already made it and you are... Somebody."

"My work explores the passing of time and the tension between the human longing for reassuring repetition and — at the same time — change. I am particularly interested in our human ability to see what we expect to see, to misinterpret, to see a partial picture as the whole, to disregard incremental change, or to completely overlook the significant."

"My current artwork uses the lines and patterns from daily weather maps and images of weather — rain, snow, clouds, hail — as visual metaphors for these ideas. It explores the constancy, variation, and violence hidden within the familiar, reassuring seasonal cycle. I also use images of oceans — stormy, placid, or dramatic — as visual reflections of human moods and emotions."

"Like a human life, my artwork is multi-layered, complex, and develops over time. Color, texture, humor, and the physical joy of applying paint and cutting relief prints are important in the creation of my work. In the process of creating a piece, I begin working on an idea with a loosely drawn skeleton. I add layers of paint and drawing, building up layers of meanings and emphasis to create a finished piece that is dense with meaning."

"My installations, which are constructed with relief-printed images on paper applied to walls, floors, and ceilings, surround the viewers with visual representations of change, movement, and repetition. They directly address change and the passage of time by surrounding the viewer with moving storms, slow drips, changing clouds, and moving hail, snow, wind, and rain."

"I think my main interests are to enlarge the horizon of the reader, but also to delight, to entertain and to educate. I would be thrilled if my language moves the reader into becoming one with the rhythm of my text...That's my purpose, to make the rhythm right and to have the reader taken up into the rhythm."

"Trinidad is such a crossroads of the Caribbean. At any given moment there are several cross-currents intersecting in that small island place - downwards from the north through the archipelago, southwards to Venezuela and beyond, outwards to North America and Europe, and then returning home to bring all of this to the Trini scene. An exciting place - full of failed effort, it is true, but also, so full of beauty and of possibility."

"Disparate and colliding identities are intrinsic to any home I have ever known. One cannot afford to be complacent. But there is too a very real sense of belonging and wherever I am, I recognise that belongingness instantly. Place does not matter to me because I know that things change constantly. For me, 'home' is a moveable shack on a beach, a moveable feast."

"I work as an educator/knowledge worker and this means that I am actively involved in the large human project of 'understanding' at all levels all the time. I don't know how this fits with the desire to convey the history of Indo-Caribbon settlement except that this area is still so underdeveloped untold, ill-understood. And maybe this novel is a small step in pushing this understanding forward"

"It is impossible to be alive and have nothing."

"Different works emerge differently and I pay no real attention to the external process. Internally I think there is an identifiable process which can be captured by one word: obsession. The thought, the line, the image, the one word: whatever is the germ of that particular poem stays and stays until it reaches its needed form on the page."

"In writing (poetry, fiction, plays, etc.) I am aware of functioning as an Indian woman from the Caribbean in dialogue with the world. The world may choose to ignore that dialogue; all the same this is what I am doing. And at a primal level, I and my kind (Indo-Caribbean women) are prohibited by the full weight of patriarchal law and authority from having dialogue with the world outside the home."

"Opening our mouths and saying our words, breaking the cycle of the "unknowable," seems to me right now an essential tool for our survival, on our own terms, and for that of our daughters and granddaughters. We can only become stronger as we build upon each other's experiences and strengthen that repository of woman-knowledge (also community-knowledge) of which we are the rightful inheritors."

"Who is the female artist functioning in a community such as ours? She speaks but her speaking drives her into a place of otherness when she speaks her truth. She is an outsider. She is subject to unbearable strain, from within and without, and she functions largely without supports. Now more Indo-Caribbean women are beginning to speak "themselves." There are poets such as Mahadai Das, Shana Yardan, Niala Maharaj, Asha Radjkoemar, Chitra Gajadin. They are writing themselves out of the family walls-breaking them down so that they can stare fully, unveiled, at the world outside. The act of writing calls for breaking faith with service-family service. Beginning the difficult task of consolidating a self-outside of family servitude."

"A writer as necessary as Ramabai Espinet should be treasured by us for her unique voice and the unique world she shares with us."

"Sometimes, someone in Venice will ask me, "What is it like in Des Moines?", and sometimes, someone in Des Moines asks, "What is it like to live in Venice?" I respond with the same answer - You can't imagine. It is another world."

"I have been a resident of Venice since 2004. For the past five years I have arranged my schedule so that I spend a full six months a year in Venice and a bit under six months in Des Moines. Approximately every two months, I go from one home and existence to the other. Sometimes I feel that I am living two completely different lives, but they are connected, and I love both of them."

"I began coming to Venice regularly in 1989, when Matilde Dolcetti, director of the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica di Venezia (SIGV), a school of printmaking and graphic design, invited me to come to the school as a visiting artist. In subsequent years, I taught classes in burin engraving, drawing, and the history of prints there. My involvement with the SIGV connected me with the printmakers, book printers and bookbinders of Venice. Those artists became my core group of friends in Venice, and the SIGV has long been my base and point of reference."

"We live near Campo San Giacomo de l'Orio, in the sestiere of Santa Croce. Our palazzo is visible in Jacopo de' Barbari's 1500 bird's eye view of Venice. In the Campo, during the day the elderly sit on the benches under the trees, the retired men stand and chat, and friends meet to drink coffee, wine, and spritz at the cafés. In the afternoon, babies toddle, kids rollerblade and kick soccer balls, and parents chat. On Wednesday evenings, I often attend Incontri, a weekly gathering for artists only, organized by the painter Maria Morganti. We meet at the Fondazione Bevilacqua LaMasa on Rio San Barnaba. Artists present talks on their work to other artists."

"We have a boat, and my husband has become really good at rowing, Venetian-style. He goes out rowing almost every evening through the year, even around midnight. He rows through the canals late at night because there is almost no one else out at that hour. It is very dark on the inner canals, but it is an amazing thing to see Venice this way. Sometimes I go along as a passenger. I often take a notebook and draw while we go through the canals. The drawings have to be really fast since we are constantly moving. He is willing to stop and tie up every once in a while so I can make a drawing from a fixed spot."

"I draw almost every day in drawing books made by a Venetian bookbinder, Renato Polliero, using an old pump fountain pen that I can fill with my own waterproof India ink. I love the flexibility of the point of a good old writing pen. For most of my life, I made drawings for completely private purposes and rarely showed or published them. They served only to generate ideas for my engravings. Since I started my drawing blog in 2006, I now draw also in order to share my images anonymously with the world on the Internet."

"In Venice, I work on my engravings on a big old oak kitchen table I bought for this purpose. The table has a very large drawer, a pullout board for rolling out pasta, and still has its pull out, meter-long rolling pin. For plate prep and proofing, I use the facilities at the Scuola di Grafica."

"My laptop computer is on a desk between my engraving table and the terrace door. There is a seven-hour time difference between Venice and Des Moines. Around 4 PM, as my colleagues are arriving at the Des Moines Art Center where it is 9 AM, I log in remotely to the museum's server. From Venice, I can literally work on the computer and printer on my desk in my office in Des Moines. Email is the same whether sent from the office next door or 6000 miles away. Work keeps going in Des Moines until around 5 PM, or midnight in Venice."

"In Des Moines, we live on a quiet street in a beautiful old wooded neighborhood. Our house is surrounded by a large yard with three century-old oak trees, bushes, and perennials. I have my own study with all my print history books. My printmaking studio is in the basement of our house. I have a 36 x 60" American French Tool etching press. From 1970, when we moved to Des Moines after graduate school, until 1997 I worked primarily as an artist and a teacher of printmaking, design, and art history. In 1974, I began to curate exhibitions on the history of prints for the DMAC, then was invited to do projects for other museums. In 1997, after I had been doing guest curatorial projects for 20 years, the DMAC finally created my part-time position as curator of prints (now prints and drawings). My responsibilities at the museum include organizing three or four exhibitions a year on prints and drawings, writing gallery guides and labels, gallery talks, doing research on works in the permanent collection, recommending acquisitions, advising on conservation, working as part of the curatorial team, cultivating collectors and donors, etc. We don't have a public print room, so there is no public access to the collection. I am staff liaison for the Des Moines Art Center Print Club, a very active group of print collectors, artists, and people interested in prints. They organize monthly programs, commission prints, and purchase works for the collection."

"My arrangement with the museum is that my schedule is mine to figure out. There are times when I have to be present in Des Moines, such as a month or so before the installation of a new exhibition. When I am in Des Moines I work very intensely, plan, and do much in advance to enable myself to be away for my regular two-month absences."

"I draw more frequently when I travel (and especially, when I am in Venice), than when I am in Des Moines. Besides an infinite number of drawings made in Italy, I have major bodies of work from time I have spent in Japan, France, Russia, Turkey (Istanbul), India and England. I have some drawings from my travels around the US too. I also make drawings while killing time in trains, planes, and airports."

"Since I am usually doing research on some aspect of the history of prints, I try to make appointments to visit the print rooms of museums in cities that I happen to visit. When we lived in London on a sabbatical in 1986-87, I enrolled in a year-long class to study lettering engraving at Sir John Cass College, City of London Polytechnic, a college that trained young engravers to pass the Guild exams and become certified engravers. I did this because I knew how to engrave pictorially, but had no sense of how to engrave words or inscriptions so I could print them. As an art historian, I had become curious about the extraordinary calligraphic inscription on an engraving of a Vanitas personification by the Dutch Mannerist engraver, Jan Saenredam. A curator friend at the British Museum suggested that I look at the British Library's collection of engraved calligraphy writing manuals from the 16th and 17th century. After years of research on what became an utterly absorbing topic for me, I ended up writing a long article about this subject (“Calligraphic Inscriptions in Dutch Mannerist Prints,” in Goltzius Studies: Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, 1993). In addition to my art historical discoveries on this topic, I was able to incorporate the technical experience I had gained by studying lettering engraving."

"Here is a recent example of how curatorial travel influences my work as an artist: On January 21, the day after Barack Obama's inauguration, I flew to Washington DC on a courier trip. Walking up the hill past the US Capitol, I saw that it was still completely set up for the inauguration, but the two million people had all gone home. It was amazing to stand in that place on the day after the inauguration. After I did my research at the Library of Congress, I walked back down the hill, stood in front of the Capitol, and drew the scene. (To see the drawing, please click here.) The next day at 7 AM, I boarded an art shipper's truck at the National Gallery of Art and accompanied several paintings on a 19-hour ride back across the US to Des Moines."

"The delight I take in crossing barriers and mixing things up may date from my experiences as a child. I grew up in The Bronx where I attended elementary and junior high school with many kids whose parents were WWII refugees. Many of my friends did not speak English at home. During the summers of 1959 and 1960, when I was 12 and 13, my father, a NYC school principal and science educator, taught National Science Foundation summer institutes for black science teachers at Virginia State College in Petersburg, VA. This was still the era of segregation, and we spent those two summers as the only white family living on the black college campus. As a teenager attending the High School of Music and Art, I absorbed the cultural richness, variety, and excitement of the city."

"The Afro-Cuban group from the Santa Marta neighborhood (at the far, far end of Dorsoduro) is great fun. The idea of this nutty group of Rasta-haired Venetian guys singing topical songs in Venetian really appeals to me. I understand Venetian dialect and I follow the local issues that Venetians are concerned about. Santa Marta is probably the Bronx of Venice. Not the most elegant part of Venice but a great place to grow up."

"The Oxford Project was a great thing to become involved in. It was created by two University of Iowa professors, Peter Feldstein and Steven G. Bloom. Peter started photographing everyone in Oxford, Iowa in 1984 in part as Conceptual Art and for sociological reasons, but also it was Peter's attempt to be accepted by the residents of this tiny Iowa town that he had moved to. He started rephotographing the same people 21 years later, in 2005, and Steve Bloom interviewed the portrait subjects. Feldstein and Bloom proposed The Oxford Project as an exhibition to the Des Moines Art Center. I was basically assigned the job of evaluating whether it was worth doing at our museum. I was intrigued and organized a selection of the works for an exhibition in 2007. The public response was incredible. The exhibition was also shown in Padova, Italy, where it was very well received. Italian viewers understood that these amazing stories were not just American, they were universal."

"For over 600 years, artists have been drawing Venice. It is the most-drawn and painted city in the world. How can anyone find something new and fresh to say? All I could do was to draw the reality of my own existence there. I drew what I wanted to understand, or where I wanted to explore or spend time. By just remaining in a place and drawing, you see so much more. You experience the life of the place, you become part of it. Because of my constantly drawing in Venice and keeping notebooks, I feel that I understand what Canaletto was doing and experiencing with his drawings."

"Last March, I stood on the loggia of San Marco, by the reproduction horses, and made a drawing I'd been thinking about doing for a while--the entire sweep of Piazza San Marco from above. It was cold, but I stood still for two hours and became completely immersed in the making of the drawing. It is a wonderful thing to experience ... a total absorption ... and a strange sense of power that I can do this."

"Very much so. Being a curator and an artist is bad in one way. In deciding to work as a curator, I sacrificed my public persona as an artist. There are many conflict of interest issues that can arise. Although my museum has many of my prints in its permanent collection (these were acquired before I became a curatorial staff member), I certainly can't ever include my own work in an exhibition. Also, I feel extremely reluctant to try to promote my work to curatorial colleagues in other museums. That is really up to the gallery that represents my work. (I do have prints in numerous museum collections, but probably could have had a lot more). A museum would like to organize a retrospective of my work, but here again, I barely have time to prepare for it. Being a curator means no longer having all day to work in the studio. Sometimes, I come home and work from after dinner until midnight in the studio."

"On the other hand, being a print curator gives me amazing access to museum collections and original art objects. I learn so much. I do not feel unconnected from history, but rather part of a continuum. I don't try to emulate artists who have gone before or who are working now, but I certainly do measure myself against them."

"Sometimes work I have done as an artist gives me an idea for an exhibition, even though I can't incorporate that fact into what I write about it. For example, right now I am preparing the exhibition, Art in Ruins, for the Des Moines Art Center. But it is really my own experience of drawing in the wreckage of a relative's house destroyed by fire and making engravings of this, and witnessing a small plane crash and later engraving it, that made me interested in this subject."

"The Des Moines Art Center is an extraordinary institution with a terrific collection, a great work environment, and wonderful colleagues. I have an enviable work arrangement. I feel I still have something to contribute in the way of teaching about prints. So I will undoubtedly continue to commute from Venice to Des Moines for the foreseeable future"

"After beginning as a painter, I realized that while I was painting or drawing I was actually perceiving the lines and spaces physically and in life-size scale. I was imagining myself in the painting or drawing much in the same way a little girl imagines herself in the doll house with her dolls. This realization of my perceptual translations caused me to build drawings as sculptures…to draw in three dimensional space."

"My major concern with sculpture is with physical and psychological movement in space and its relationship to human scale. My effort is to create forms and colors which cause the mind to dance to unheard music. I feel as if I’m translating the form, tone and movement of sound into physical space and time. My sculptures often read visually as music with crescendos, resting places and rhythmic progressions."

"I have worked for the last 5 years on a concentrated series of figures. Even though they do make reference to something recognizable, I am still working as they were abstract with the same human scale relationships and on the same conveyance of feeling through form. Here I am speaking of the metaphor of the human body to the vessel form, but importantly a vessel that can contain nothing but air. This is how I see myself and others, as outlines or drawings which suggest form but cannot restrain or contain the spirit."

"Phil Cooper was eleven years old when he began to understand that his father meant to bend him to his will."

"our little niece came tearing out to meet us."

"The story begins as the Pilgrim family, along with the rest of the Whanganui branch of The Children, move south to Nelson, to join with another branch. The reason for the move is unclear, but the teenagers assume it has something to do with needing to match-make, as many of the young females are approaching marriageable age – 16. Rebecca has lived her entire life within her family group, though she and the other children had to attend a ‘worldly school’ in Whanganui. It is a frightening prospect, then, when she is sent with her twin, Rachel, to sell produce at a farmers’ market on Saturdays in Nelson. This interaction with people who live their lives in freedom proves an eye-opener for both sisters."

"At no stage in the book does Beale let up on the tension, as we follow the sisters through impossible situations with regards to the Rule regarding every aspect of the Children of the Faith and how they manage themselves. The sisters must abase themselves each time they need to tell their Father something, for fear of earning hours of prayer. The tension builds, with death, bad marriage matches and new babies adding to it, until Rebecca begins to doubt, finally, the wisdom of her elders."

"cv_I_am_not_estherOne of the factors that contributes to Rebecca’s doubt is the not-insignificant fact that she, along with the rest of the family group, are meant to act as though their older sister and brother are dead, as well as her “trouble-causing” cousin, who she is continually required to stand up for. I am not Esther tells the story of the siblings and cousin who left the group – which to the family unit means they must be treated as ‘dead’. Rebecca is determined, in her own way, to remember that they existed, but not without guilt over this."

"While I won’t tell you what happens, I will say that Rebecca is a strong and admirable character. You feel that Beale really lets you into the mind of somebody who has grown up within a strict environment such as The Children of the Faith. Beale’s books have dealt with cults several times previously, but always from the outside looking in, so this is a refreshing point of view."

"Storytelling is an art deep within human nature. Good narratives not only tell us about ourselves; they tell us about the beliefs of others. Stories are the essential way by which we expand our empathy and our imaginations; stories are the means by which we communicate across time and across cultures."

"The historians’ craft is to tease out the larger narratives from … competing versions, missing parts, and conflicting ‘truths’."

"Biographies are essentially personal histories… [yet] they may tell us more than the story of one life: they may reveal the struggle for the survival of an entire community."

"Oral history is transmitted by narrative, by song, by proverb and by genealogy. We who write down our histories in books transmit our chosen perceptions to readers rather than to listeners, but both forms are structured,interpretative and combative."

"My poems don't start from ideas, but from bits of language, maybe a turn of phrase that's like a tune that plays over and over in my mind. A poem can often be like a game in my head where I want to think about something I don't fully understand. Recently a child said to me, 'I'm not me. I'm someone else. I'm very strong. I'm Richie McCaw.' It's easy when you're four years old to play this sort of game. Writing is one way that as an adult I can take on a different persona. Some of these poems may suggest I live in rest home and that I have won the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship and lived in Menton. I did once spend a happy weekend in Paris, but I've never been to Menton and I have never won the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship. That doesn't stop me wondering what it would be like to be selected for a magnificent prize and live in a remote city. I also wonder what it may be like one day to live in a rest home.'"

"I don’t have a favourite genre. I try to ready widely."

"There’s almost always a book of poems that I’m reading and I keep it by my bed or in my handbag if the book is skinny enough. At present I am still reading Essential New Zealand Poems and I am also reading Horse with Hat by Marty Smith. I’ve also read some of Milton’s poetry, particular a verse drama called Samson Agonistes that for some reason I never got round to reading when I studied Milton as a university student. (Paula — these books aren’t children’s books in case you think they are."

"I’m reading a novel too – it’s called Concluding by Henry Green. It first came out when I was 6 years old but of course I didn’t know anything about him then. He was talked about a bit when I was at university but was never in any of the English papers I did."

"If you want to write in a particular genre it’s likely you’ll read that genre. At the same time I sometimes find that the books that really get me writing are a surprise. It’s not necessarily books of modern poetry that make me want to write poems."

"I don’t often feel inspired. I try to keep writing and sometimes something unexpected happens and I find I’m writing more easily and confidently than usual. It’s wonderful when that happens."

"Things that make me want to write vary."

"What I read is often helpful. Sometimes first lines of very good writers make me want to write my own poem almost as a response to theirs. Janet Frame and Anne Carson have done that for me."

"Sometimes being under a particular pressure makes me write easily. Which seems strange. Pressure might be a time constraint, like to write something in 20 minutes. Or it might be a set of ‘rules’, like ‘Write a poem that consists entirely of untrue statements’. I think the hardest thing to do is probably to be told to take as long as you need to write the best poem you possibly can about whatever you think is important. If there are constraints you can always blame them if your poem isn’t as terrific as you would have liked it to be."

"Walking helps me to write. I’m pretty sure Fiona Farrell has written about how how walking helps her to write."

"Yes, I almost always do this."

"I mentioned earlier that I always have a notebook. Usually this is where I draft poems and then maybe weeks later I read back over this notebook. Some things I’ve written look a bit feeble but often there’s something I can use and develop further."

"After a gap of time, I can often look at a poem a bit more objectively and see what needs doing to it. I would hardly ever send a poem I’ve just written away to a literary magazine because I am so likely to see things I want to change if I look at it after a few weeks"

"Yes, I suppose sometimes I do feel the opposite from inspired and can’t think how to begin or continue anything."

"Sometimes I find that to think of it as being like having a bit of a headache is useful. Okay, it’s there, and I can either retire to bed feeling sorry for myself or just go on doing what I do as best I can. But if I decide I am suffering from Writer’s Block and stop writing then there is no chance of my writing well."

"Michael Harlow once said at a workshop that if you write a word another flies to it. That’s mostly true for me. So if I can find a word or a phrase from anywhere and write it down then there is a chance some writing will happen. It may not be very good, but at least its writing."

"If I was feeling flat about my writing, I used to return to a book called Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg and it helped me to forgive myself for often writing rubbishy, dull stuff. (And it also has some really good suggestions, about daily writing practice that I found useful.)"

"I don’t think I can answer this very well. There’s no single thing that is particularly hard for me."

"I have learned to accept that alternating between thinking I have just written a Truly Terrific Poem and thinking that I am an Embarrassing Disaster of a Writer who will never manage an even halfway decent poem doesn’t help me at all. I’m gradually realising that nothing I write will change the world and knock its little cotton socks off, but also I’ve come to realise that there’s no need to be ashamed of what I write."

"Just keeping going, I guess, is hard. There are lots of other wonderful things to do. How do you balance these different aspects of your life? I’m busy, as most people are busy. I don’t write as much as I would like to write. I also need to work on regularly finishing poems and sending them away to literary magazines."

"Sometimes writing can seem a bit lonely. But having a group of people you trust and with whom you can share your writing helps."

"Nobody has to be a writer. But when it’s going well it’s good fun and satisfying."

"General practitioners have been largely forgotten in primary healthcare."

"This year, more than the Sanremo Festival, it's a record for the summer because everyone brought songs with choruses, which are very catchy."

"I eat less meat now, also out of respect for animals. Let's say I eat the essentials. Because, after all, we can't just eat fruit and vegetables; we need meat too, if we want to stay healthy."

"I wouldn't have even participated in Canzonissima and other similar events if I hadn't been forced by a contract. I don't sing songs destined to win."

"I was the ye ye girl with the miniskirt, at 22 I was already famous, but I wanted to change and I transformed myself into a fifty-year-old woman to sing the authors I loved, like Brel who later became my friend, or Ferré who was like a brother."

"Be humble enough to accept the fact that you still need mentoring. We have no intention of meddling in their work. The fact that we give a grant means we also have a stake in their films, and we want them to succeed."

"Criticisms are unavoidable. Filmmaking is really like that. These filmmakers should consider themselves lucky because they are in a friendly environment—they have our full support. Imagine if they decided to start on their own.”"

"I, in my capacity as President of the Cinemalaya Foundation, will be able to help the MMDA improve its coverage of this aspect of the Metro Manila Film Festival. Because alternative films are really there also to complement and to also give another view of... to complete the view of what Filipino films are in this country."

"It’s all about the family, the more you will love your family after watching. Here we will see the real lesson, how can I love my family?"

"We both feel it. 'Cause we are best friends in the movie and in real life. We're like brothers, and we have a line, 'when you live again, you're my guardian angel', in real life he's like that to me."

"ang nanaig ay pagmamahal sa kapatid."

"We have built an institution that transcends political boundaries and that binds us to one another in the true essence of service."

"As an island-nation, our country is very vulnerable to the grim effects of global warming that brings extreme weather. It’s hard to imagine what we as individuals can do to resolve a problem of this scale and severity, but all of us, should be proactive in preventing further degradation of our environment."

"Differences are not something to be resented because they add richness, depth, and texture to a marriage. Besides, every couple has areas of incompatibility but smart couples learn how to celebrate the similarities and leverage the differences in ways that say “I love you” and allow for discovery and new growth."

"Maawa naman sila (They should have pity). If this is to divert attention or (part of) muddling the investigation, spare me from it. Leave me alone first. My family and I are still mourning the death of the father of my children."

"When you're painting you feel quite attune with everything... it's a great pleasure, quite addictive."

"I felt very strongly about feminism and photography better expressed my political ideals."

"They become a body not a person, then just an image not an image of a person."

"I think I would have been more successful, but less interesting."

"It was too hard to be a feminist artist on your own; the criticism was too great to bear."

"Art is a structure of symbols, and those people who do not comprehend that language will pass it by."

"I don't want to work unless there is some meaning that by painting I can communicate something personal and political. A painting is ambiguous, very sensuous and has to come from your core."

"I might refer to the female now, but she is always active, symbolic of female action and although painted in a sensual style, she is not up for sale, not offered to the viewer. This is one of the reasons I started using animals."

"AI's ability to mimic voices is deeply concerning at it can wreak havoc in elections by mimicking candidates' voices."

"I want to take care of the teacher so that the teacher in turn will take care of our children, so in turn our children will take care of the future of the country."

"More and more, we are being required to know what are the implications of living in a society that is increasingly diverse through the arrival of immigrants from all walks of life and very different parts of the planet. I would like to think that our work is a tangible example of what people can achieve when they work together."

"[A] painting presents its own battle, its own requirements. And a print is never a reproduction of a painting. It makes its own demands, it has its own life, its own thing going for it."

"When you're painting, nobody else knows what you're doing and you're the only one who understands it. You've got to have faith in what you're doing and in humanity."

"I couldn't imagine painting anyone I didn't like. When people do appear in my paintings, they're always people for whom I have a special feeling."

"Being an artist is submitting to the learning that comes from being a mother. It's all the better for the work in the end. It enriches your field of understanding of human nature, all the hards bits and the good bits, the whole thing...Ultimately, the way forward is to be grateful for the blessings that come from accepting those challenges."

"A consistent thread in my work is that it’s made in response to place, and what’s happening around me – physical and social environments provide the raw material, the inspiration, the starting point."

"I'm happy that I have seen him. And he's okay, but he's so thin. Skin and bones. Like in this picture."

"I think the employees and the officials of the Court equally deserve appreciation from the justices. You have (stood) up with courage in supporting the justices regardless of any personal inconvenience or risk on your part."

"No amount of past oppression can justify women's oppression of the most vulnerable among us."

"At the heart of her doubts about secular liberalism (and what she described as "radical, upscale feminism") was its embrace of abortion and its (continuing) dalliance with euthanasia. At first, she went along with abortion, albeit reluctantly, believing that women's rights to develop their talents and control their destinies required its legal availability. But Betsey (as she was known by her friends) was not one who could avert her eyes from inconvenient facts. The central fact about abortion is that it is the deliberate killing of a developing child in the womb. For Betsey, euphemisms such as "products of conception," "termination of pregnancy," "privacy," and "choice" ultimately could not hide that fact. She came to see that to countenance abortion is not to respect women's "privacy" or liberty; it is to suppose that some people have the right to decide whether others will live or die."

"We must really give special attention to our women athletes, including our Para athletes. And not just the athletes and their coaches but those who help build and promote women sports. These awards are for those who provide inspiration for all women in sports."